WORLDSPECIAL REPORT the Tech Behind Bitcoin Has Been Released

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Intel Inside®. Powerful Productivity Outside. Learn more at supermicro.com/GPU © Super Micro Computer, Inc. Specifications subject to change without notice. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. 10.17 Special Report: BLOCKCHAIN WORLD The Blossoming 26 Blockchains: How They 45 Blockchain Lingo Work and Why They’ll Change Your cheat sheet for all things blockchain. of Blockchain the World 24 Enthusiasts The technology behind Bitcoin could touch every 46 Photo Essay: are sure that transaction you ever make. By Morgen E. Peck The Bitcoin Mines of China This Bitcoin operation in Inner Mongolia uses blockchain 36 Feeding the sophisticated semiconductors to turn cheap, dirty technology is Blockchain Beast energy into digital cash. Text by Morgen E. Peck going to take over By 2020, Bitcoin will probably be using as much Photography by Stefen Chow electricity as Denmark, and that’s a problem. the world. We set By Peter Fairley 54 Govern by Blockchain out to discover Can blockchains cut government red tape? if they’re right. 38 Do You Need a Blockchain? Dubai and Illinois may be the first to find out. This chart will tell you if the technology can solve By Amy Nordrum By Morgen E. Peck your problem. By Morgen E. Peck & Samuel K. Moore 56 Energy Trading for 40 Wall Street Occupies Fun and Profit the Blockchain Buy your neighbor’s rooftop solar power or Financial firms now want to adopt the technology that was sell yours—it’ll all be on a blockchain. predicted to render them obsolete. By Amy Nordrum By Morgen E. Peck & David Wagman

On the cover and above Illustrations for IEEE Spectrum by Mario De Meyer

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09 15 08 Online News Resources Opinion spectrum.ieee.org Advances in Magnetic Tape Tech Halloween Hack Make the Web Better for Everyone The Bandwidth Defender Keep Unspooling A wearable Python-based It’s ubiquitous, but it delights as IEEE Spectrum spent a day in Thinner tape, tinier bits, and smarter microcontroller and some LEDs much as it annoys. Must it stay the field with a radio-frequency- error correction yield a cartridge transform a cheap costume. that way? interference hunter. His job is that puts 330 million books’ worth By Stephen Cass By G. Pascal Zachary to find gadgets that are illegally of data in the palm of your hand. transmitting signals in licensed By Prachi Patel 17 S tartups: LPPFusion Turns 04 Back Story frequency bands and ask their Instability to Its Advantage 06 Contributors owners to shut them off. Watch the 11 Nuclear Power’s Last Hope? 18 R eview: The Deep History of 20 Numbers Don’t Lie: video at http://spectrum.ieee.org/ 13 AI Versus Doctors Humanoid Robots Sputnik Turns 60 rfhunters1017 14 Self-Driving Wheelchairs Debut 72 Past Forward: 22 Technically Speaking: Software as Hardware Dark Web Dialect

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Efficient Design of Integrated Photonic Circuits AUTOMATED TRADING Sentient.AI, a San Francisco–based startup, has Fluid-Structure Interaction Analysis of a Piezoelectric Fan completely automated its hedge fund using its own AI software. IEEE Fellow Risto Miikkulainen, the company’s chief research officer, explains how it was White Papers developed through trial and error over the past decade. Available at http://spectrum.ieee.org/whitepapers HISTORY OF THE STOCK TICKER One of Thomas Edison’s first inventions, the stock ticker revolutionized the speed at which financial Sequential Peeling: A Model-Based Approach to Structure Identification information flowed. and De-embedding Fundamentals to Building a Test System: Automated Test Power HONEST DOLLAR Senior Member William Hurley sold his startup— Infrastructure which created a way for those without employer-sponsored retirement Selecting Current Sensors and Transformers plans to invest toward their future—to Goldman Sachs. Unified Storage: Software-Defined Storage Made Easy Capacitor Selection for Switch Mode Power Supply Applications

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SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 03 BACK STORY_

Safety meets performance The Mines of Mongolia

n 4 July, Morgen E. Peck woke up in the middle of the night with a slight case of panic. For three months, she had been pressing officials at Bitmain, a Chinese bitcoin-mining hardware company, to allow her to tour a mining facility it runs in Inner Mongolia. And for two months she had received encouraging but noncommittal responses. Now, though, time was about to run out because the deadlines were looming for O our October issue. Miners can be an evasive bunch, she says. “I had visited a few small mines in central China before and been greeted by snarling watchdogs Arm C/C++ and shirtless, screaming watch-humans.” So getting entry to Bitmain would take patience and a battering ram of charm. Compiler Late on the 4th, it paid off, and the trip was approved. A week later she flew to Baotou, a city in Inner Mongolia that’s near Bitmain’s mines. The setting provided a stark contrast to the clean idealism of the Bitcoin for functional project. “Baotou was probably the ugliest place I’ve ever been,” says Peck. “A coal plant sits right in the middle of the city. Foliage everywhere safety covered in soot. A filthy discolored river snaking through it all. These are the places that keep Bitcoin running. You don’t think about all that when you’re nibbling a lunch of baked salmon at a blockchain industry conference listening to someone tell you how Bitcoin is the salvation for the unbanked.” Despite the initial ambivalence of her hosts, when Peck arrived she found them fully committed to transparency. The only scrutiny came from the local police chief. “He was obviously on good terms with everyone there. Which was interesting in itself, as other miners I’ve visited were clearly skirting the law,” says Peck. “Here, though, I was the Visit only person he was worried about.” ■ developer.arm.com/compiler

CITING ARTICLES IN IEEE SPECTRUM IEEE Spectrum publishes an international and a North American edition, as

10.17 indicated at the bottom of each page. Both have the same edit orial content, but because of diff erences in advertising, page numbers may differ. In citations, you should include the issue designation. For e xample, Past Forward is in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 54, no. 10 (INT), October 2017, p. 64, or in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 54, no. 10 (NA), October 2017, p. 72.

04 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG PHOTOGRAPH BY Stefen Chow

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EDITOR IN CHIEF EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Susan Hassler, [email protected] Susan Hassler, Chair; David C. Brock, Sudhir Dixit, Limor EXECUTIVE EDITOR Fried, Robert Hebner, Joseph J. Helble, Grant Jacoby, Leah Mario De Meyer Glenn Zorpette, [email protected] Jamieson, Jelena Kovacevic, Deepa Kundur, Norberto De Meyer, a graphic designer in Ghent, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, DIGITAL Lerendegui, Steve Mann, Allison Marsh, Jacob Østergaard, Harry Goldstein, [email protected] Umit Ozguner, Thrasos Pappas, H. Vincent Poor, John Rogers, Belgium, was already familiar with MANAGING EDITOR Jonathan Rothberg, Umar Saif, Takao Someya, Maurizio Bitcoin when he agreed to illustrate this month’s Elizabeth A. Bretz, [email protected] Vecchione, Yu Zheng, Kun Zhou, Edward Zyszkowski special issue on blockchains, but he still did “quite SENIOR ART DIRECTOR MANAGING DIRECTOR, PUBLICATIONS Michael B. Forster a bit of research to have a better idea of how a Mark Montgomery, [email protected] SENIOR EDITORS blockchain actually works.” Research, he says, is Stephen Cass (Resources), [email protected] EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE “one of my favorite parts of the design process.” Erico Guizzo (Digital), [email protected] IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor, De Meyer’s depictions of cascading, interlinking Jean Kumagai, [email protected] New York, NY 10016-5997 TEL: +1 212 419 7555 FAX: +1 212 419 7570 chains of blocks evoke the technology’s ingenuity Samuel K. Moore (News), [email protected] Tekla S. Perry, [email protected] BUREAU Palo Alto, Calif.; Tekla S. Perry +1 650 752 6661 and complexity. Philip E. Ross, [email protected] David Schneider, [email protected] DIRECTOR, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, MEDIA & ADVERTISING Mark David, [email protected] DEPUTY ART DIRECTOR Brandon Palacio, [email protected] PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR Randi Klett, [email protected] ADVERTISING INQUIRIES ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Erik Vrielink, [email protected] Peter Fairley IEEE GLOBALSPEC SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR 30 Tech Valley Dr., Suite 102, East Greenbush, NY 12061 Eliza Strickland, [email protected] Contributing editor Fairley had +1 844 300 3098 Toll-free: +1 800 261 2052 ASSOCIATE EDITORS www.globalspec.com just noticed the emerging use of Celia Gorman (Multimedia), [email protected] VP, DIGITAL MEDIA & ENGINEERING INSIGHT Don Lesem blockchains to trade tiny amounts of renewable Willie D. Jones (News), [email protected] +1 518 238 6514, [email protected] Amy Nordrum, [email protected] energy when we asked him to cover a very VP, SALES & CUSTOMER CARE Peter Hauhuth SENIOR COPY EDITOR Joseph N. Levine, [email protected] different angle: the huge amount of electricity that +1 303 594 8007, [email protected] COPY EDITOR Michele Kogon, [email protected] SENIOR DIRECTOR, PRODUCT MANAGEMENT Bitcoin uses [p. 36]. His reporting was sobering. EDITORIAL RESEARCHER Alan Gardner, [email protected] & MARKETING Christian Noe “There doesn’t seem to be a hard limit to the ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT +1 518 238 6611, [email protected] Ramona L. Foster, [email protected] energy that blockchains could consume,” he SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER Linda Uslaner says. Fairley also wrote “A Pyrrhic Victory for PHOTOGRAPHY INTERN Alexandra Sapp +1 518 238 6527, [email protected] VIDEO INTERN Alyssa Pagano Nuclear Power,” in this issue [p. 11]. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Evan Ackerman, Mark Anderson, REPRINT SALES +1 212 221 9595, ext. 319 John Blau, Robert N. Charette, Peter Fairley, Tam Harbert, REPRINT PERMISSION / LIBRARIES Articles may be Mark Harris, David Kushner, Robert W. 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In this issue, MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION SPECIALIST Michael Spector Lines, and Technically Speaking are trademarks of IEEE. she reviews the robots exhibition mounted by ADVERTISING PRODUCTION +1 732 562 6334 Responsibility for the substance of articles rests upon the ADVERTISING PRODUCTION MANAGER authors, not IEEE, its organizational units, or its members. the Science Museum in London [p. 18], which Felicia Spagnoli, [email protected] Articles do not represent official positions of IEEE. Readers charts the development of humanoid automata SENIOR ADVERTISING PRODUCTION COORDINATOR may post comments online; comments may be excerpted for since the 1500s. “Visitors can see imagination and Nicole Evans Gyimah, [email protected] publication. IEEE reserves the right to reject any advertising. engineering standing side by side, just the way I like it,” says Nocks.

IEEE BOARD OF DIRECTORS CORPORATE ACTIVITIES Donna Hourican Prachi Patel PRESIDENT & CEO Karen Bartleson, [email protected] +1 732 562 6330, [email protected] +1 732 562 3928 FAX: +1 732 465 6444 MEMBER & GEOGRAPHIC ACTIVITIES Cecelia Jankowski Pittsburgh-based freelance writer Patel PRESIDENT-ELECT James A. Jefferies +1 732 562 5504, [email protected] TREASURER John W. Walz SECRETARY William P. Walsh has reported on DNA data storage and STANDARDS ACTIVITIES Konstantinos Karachalios PAST PRESIDENT Barry L. Shoop other novel data-storage forms for IEEE Spectrum +1 732 562 3820, [email protected] VICE PRESIDENTS and other outlets. As she points out in “Three S.K. Ramesh, Educational Activities; Samir M. El-Ghazaly, GENERAL COUNSEL & CHIEF COMPLIANCE OFFICER Advances Make Magnetic Tape More Than a Publication Services & Products; Mary Ellen Randall, Member Eileen M. Lach, +1 212 705 8990, [email protected] EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES Jamie Moesch Memory” [p. 9], the growing need for storage & Geographic Activities; Forrest D. “Don” Wright, President, Standards Association; Marina Ruggieri, Technical Activities; +1 732 562 5514, [email protected] will not stop. Patel says she contributes her fair Karen S. Pedersen, President, IEEE-USA CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER & share of data: “I struggle with needing increasing DIVISION DIRECTORS ACTING CHIEF HUMAN RESOURCES OFFICER amounts of memory as my kids grow up. There’s Maciej Ogorzalek (I); F.D. “Don” Tan (II); Celia L. Desmond (III); Thomas R. Siegert +1 732 562 6843, [email protected] Jennifer T. Bernhard (IV); Harold Javid (V); John Y. Hung (VI); never enough memory to store photos and videos.” TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES Mary Ward-Callan Alan C. Rotz (VII); Dejan Milojicic (VIII); Ray Liu (IX); +1 732 562 3850, [email protected] Toshio Fukuda (X) MANAGING DIRECTOR, IEEE-USA Chris Brantley REGION DIRECTORS Ronald A. Tabroff (1); Katherine J. Duncan (2); +1 202 530 8349, [email protected] James M. Conrad (3); Bernard T. Sander (4); Francis B. David Wagman Grosz Jr. (5); Kathleen Kramer (6); Witold M. Kinsner (7); IEEE PUBLICATION SERVICES & PRODUCTS BOARD Wagman is the editorial director at Margaretha A. Eriksson (8); Antonio C. Ferreira (9); Samir M. El-Ghazaly, Chair; John Baillieul, Sergio Benedetto, Kukjin Chun (10) Jennifer T. Bernhard, Eddie Custovic, Ron B. Goldfarb, IEEE Engineering360. The energy DIRECTOR EMERITUS Theodore W. Hissey Lawrence Hall, Clem Karl, Hulya Kirkici, Carmen S. Menoni, sector has been his passion for more than three Paolo Montuschi, Thrasos Pappas, Michael Pecht, Michael decades. In this issue, he reports on the use of IEEE STAFF Polis, Sorel Reisman, Tariq Samad, Fred Schindler, Gianluca blockchain technology in energy markets [p. 56]. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & COO James Prendergast Setti, Gaurav Sharma, Curtis A. Siller, Ravi Todi, Stephanie M. +1 732 502 5400, [email protected] White, Steve Yurkovich, Daniel Zeng, Reza Zoughi “It expands on the ‘democratization’ of the sector, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Cherif Amirat giving further status to distributed generation such +1 732 562 6399, [email protected] IEEE OPERATIONS CENTER as rooftop solar,” Wagman says. “As the concept PUBLICATIONS Michael B. Forster +1 732 562 3998, [email protected] 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331 evolves, it will be interesting to see how the idea CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Karen L. Hawkins Piscataway, NJ 08854-1331 U.S.A. of what constitutes a power generator changes.” +1 732 562 3964, [email protected] Tel: +1 732 981 0060 Fax: +1 732 981 1721

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came under the supervision of the U.S. government. So did the country’s leading computer company, IBM. Because of government limits, Bell stayed out of the computer business— and licensed its revolutionary transistor to others. IBM’s management, meanwhile, felt pressured by the government to “unbundle” software that came free with its computers, which in one swoop created a nascent software industry that a half century later is the envy of the world. Since governments can help make innovations fairer, what kind of interventions might the U.S. government make to reform the Web? First, it can support net neutral- ity. The policy helps sustain wider support for asking Amazon, F acebook, and Google to behave as “common carriers,” which Make the Web Better for Everyone must treat their vendors evenhandedly but also police their behavior, disallow- Corporations and governments must partner to fix ing Web fraud in all forms. a broken medium New obligations on the digital oligarchy are based on the reality that a few companies earn huge profits from the Web; the he Web has serious problems: peddler of unreliable information, costs of supervising the Web more closely, and rooting haven for criminals, spawning ground for irrational conspiracy out unhealthy practices, should be viewed as a nec- fears, and tool for destructive people to broadcast their violence essary cost of doing business for these big winners. in real time and with posted recordings. ¶ No doubt your list of Facebook and Google are already trying to combat Web pathologies is different from mine. But surely you agree that the impression—and the reality—that their services are the Web disappoints as much as it delights. ¶ Now the hard part— too easily harnessed by the malevolent. By using novel what to do about it? ¶ Starting over is impossible. The Web is the automated techniques combined with brute-force T ground of our global civilization, a pillar of contemporary existence. methods—human review of such inherently unstable Even as we complain about the excesses and shortcomings of the Web, we services as live streams—Facebook and Google should can’t survive without it. ¶ For engineers and technovisionaries, the solu- be able to dramatically reduce abuses over time. tion flows from an admirable U.S. tradition: building a better mousetrap. ¶ Social engineering is also needed. If you grew up For redesigners of the broken Web, the popular impulse is to expand digital in the United States in the 1960s, you well remember freedom by creating a Web so decentralized that governments can’t censor it the national campaign against littering. At that time, and big corporations can’t dominate. ¶ However noble, the freedom advo- Americans routinely tossed trash out of their car win- cates fail to account for a major class of vexations arising from anonymity, dows. Within a decade, antilittering campaigns made which allows, say, Russian hackers to pose as legitimate tweeters and ter- most Americans ashamed to do so. rorist groups to recruit through Facebook pages. ¶ To be sure, escape from I’m ashamed at how some people abuse the Web, government surveillance through digital masks has benefits, yet the path which has many virtues worth preserving. I’m cer- to improved governance across the world doesn’t chiefly lie with finding tain that, working with the corporations that profit more clever ways to hide from official oppression. More freedom, ultimately, greatly from the Web—and with national govern- will only spawn more irresponsible, harmful behavior. ¶ If more freedom ments, which have the power to reduce abuses while and greater privacy won’t cure what ails the Web, might we consider older still protecting privacy and freedom of expression— forms of control and the cooperation of essential public services? ¶ In the we can get closer to the Web experience we all want. 19th century, railroads gained such power over the lives of cities and towns —G. Pascal Zachary

across the United States that norms, rules, and laws emerged to impose a G. Pascal Zachary is a professor of practice at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society. The views expressed here are the author’s own and modicum of fairness on routes, fares, and services. Similarly, in the 20th do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or IEEE. century, the Bell telephone network, having gained a “natural” monopoly, ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/spectrallines1017

08 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Edmon de Haro 41.25: HOW MANY TIMES AS MUCH DATA THE NEW MAGNETIC TAPE HOLDS VERSUS A DECADE AGO

In the age of flash memory and DNA- based data storage, magnetic tape sounds like an anach- ronism. But the workhorse storage technology is rac- ing along. Scientists at IBM Research say they can now store 201 gigabits per square inch on a special “sputtered” tape made by Sony Storage Media Solutions. The palm-size cartridge, into which IBM scientists squeezed a kilometer-long ribbon of tape, could hold 330 terabytes of data, or roughly 330 million books’ worth. By comparison, the largest solid-state drive, made by Seagate, is twice as big and can store 60 TB, while the largest hard disk can store only 12 TB. IBM’s best commercial tape cartridge, which began shipping this year, holds 15 TB. IBM’s first tape drive, introduced in 1952, had an areal density of 1,400 bits THREE ADVANCES MAKE per square inch and a capacity of approximately 2.3 megabytes. MAGNETIC TAPE IBM sees a growing business opportunity in tape

MORE THAN A MEMORY SMALL TAPE, BIG CACHE: This 1-square-inch strip of magnetic tape, held by IBM Research’s Mark Sony and IBM keep tape storage running apace, Lantz, can store 201 gigabits of

IBM RESEARCH IBM with these key developments data, a new record.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 09 storage, particularly for storing data in the cloud, which is called cold storage. Hard disks are reaching the end of Recording current their capacity scaling. And though flash might be much zippier, tape is by far the cheapest and most energy-efficient medium for storing large amounts of data you don’t need to access much. Think backups, archives, and recov- Magnetic coil ery, says IBM Research scientist Mark Lantz. “I’m not aware of anything commercial or on the time horizon of the next few years that’s at all competitive with tape,” he says. “Tape has huge potential to keep scaling areal density.” To store data on tape, an electromag- net called a write transducer magne- tizes tiny regions (small crystals called grains) of the tape so that the magneti- Magnetic head core zation field of each region points left or right, to encode bits 1 or 0. Heretofore, Servo pattern IBM has increased tape drive density by shrinking those magnetic grains, as well as the read/write transducers and the distance between the transducers and the tape. “The marginal costs of manufacturing remain about the same, so we reduce cost per giga- Recording magnetic field byte,” Lantz says. The staggering new leap in density, Vertical bits however, required the IBM-Sony team to bring together several novel tech- Recording medium nologies. Here are three key advances that led to the prototype tape system reported in the IEEE Transactions on MO’ BETTER BITS: Stacking the bits vertically and added a thin layer of a highly Magnetics in July. and refining the servo pattern that helps the magnetized material inside the writer, read/write head maintain precise positioning let IBM Research scientists pack in more data yielding a stronger, sharper magnetic NEW TAPE SCHEMATICS and access it with improved accuracy. field. Sony also added an ultrathin lubri- The surface of conventional tape is cant layer on the tape surface because painted with a magnetic material. Sony the thinner tape comes in closer con- instead used a “sputtering” method to tact with the read/write heads, causing coat the tape with a multilayer magnetic more friction. metal film. The sputtered film is thinner are 47 by 13 nm.) In the new demo sys- and has narrower grains, with magne- tem, the researchers shrunk the data MORE PRECISE SERVO CONTROL tization that points up or down relative bits to 103 by 31 nm. The drastically nar- Very much like magnetic disks, every to the surface. This allows more bits in rower bits allow more than 20 times as tape has long, continuous servo tracks the same tape area. many data tracks to fit in the same width running down its length. These spe- Think of each bit as a rectangular mag- of tape. cial magnetization patterns, which netic region. On IBM’s latest commer- To accommodate such tiny data ele- look like tire tracks, are recorded on cially available tape, each bit measures ments, the IBM team decreased the the tape during the manufacturing 1,347 by 50 nanometers. (Hard disk bits width of the tape reader to 48 nm process. Servo tracks help read/write

10 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Emily Cooper heads maintain precise positioning relative to the tape. The IBM team made the servo pattern A PYRRHIC VICTORY shorter, narrower, and more angled in order to match the smaller magnetic NEWS grains of the tape media. They also FOR NUCLEAR POWER equipped the system with two new The safest-ever reactors may not be enough for signal-processing algorithms. One com- China to reverse nuclear’s downward trajectory pares the signal from the servo pattern with a reference pattern to more accurately measure position. The other mea- By late this year or early in 2018, two nuclear reactors sures the difference between the desired could start operating in China—an event that might be track position and the actual position of a lifesaver for the units’ crippled builder and designer, the read/write head, and then controls Westinghouse Electric Co., and for the technology they an actuator to fix that error. represent. Both Westinghouse and its prized AP1000 reactor design Together, these advances allow the have suffered a series of humbling setbacks this year. read/write head to follow a data track to The AP1000 is arguably the world’s most advanced commercial reac- within 6.5-nm accuracy. This happens tor. It is designed to passively cool itself during an accidental shutdown, even as the tape flies by at speeds as high theoretically avoiding accidents like those at Ukraine’s Chernobyl power as 4 meters per second (a feat akin to fly- plant and Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi. And for over a decade, it has been ing an airplane precisely along a yellow the presumed successor to China’s mainstay reactors, which employ a line in the road). 1970s-era French design. Yet after more than three decades of engineering, regulatory reviews, ADVANCED NOISE DETECTION salesmanship, and construction, the AP1000 has yielded zero electric- AND ERROR CORRECTION ity and plenty of trouble. Delays and cost overruns at the four reactors As the bits get smaller, reading errors go under construction in China and another four in the United States drove up. “If we squeeze bits closer, the magnetic Westinghouse into bankruptcy this March. And in July, South Carolina fields of neighboring bits start to interfere utilities abandoned their pair of partially built AP1000s—on which they with the ones we’re trying to read,” Lantz and Westinghouse have spent US $9 billion. says. So the difference between a lower- But the Chinese reactors, at the Haiyang Nuclear Power Plant in Shandong value 0 signal and a higher-value 1 might and at the Sanmen plant in Zhejiang, could press the reset button for the be harder to make out. To make up for this, AP1000 and Westinghouse. And China is where success really matters magnetic storage technologies use algo- most because it is the only country building reactors by the dozen. rithms that, instead of reading a single bit, The question, say experts, is what take into account signals from a series of FALSE START: Installation of share the AP1000 can capture of a bits and decide on the most likely pattern the containment dome at China’s Chinese reactor market that has taken Haiyang nuclear plant in August of data that would create the signal. The 2015 was the end of the beginning a downturn since the Fukushima acci- IBM researchers came up with a new and of this AP1000 facility’s problems. dent and may slow even further. Gov- improved maximum-likelihood sequence- detection algorithm. They also improved upon the storage technology’s error-correction coding, which is used to slash bit-reading error rates. In the new system, the raw data goes through two decoders. The first looks for errors along rows, while the stronger second one checks columns. The data is run through these decoders twice. —Prachi Patel

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IMAGINECHINA/AP tape1017

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 11 ernment plans to tie nuclear power sive safety. However, to seal the deal, an expert in international security and rates to wholesale prices for coal-fired Westinghouse and SNPTC needed a energy supply issues at the University of power will “definitely mean a slowdown completed AP1000 project in order to British Columbia, in Vancouver. of nuclear power construction down prove that the design worked and was What is clear, says Ramana, is that the road,” says Henry Chan, an Asian cost effective. It has been a long wait missed deadlines and cost escalation geopolitics expert at the National Uni- for the first Sanmen and Haiyang reac- have hurt the AP1000’s future prospects. versity of Singapore who tracks China’s tors, which were to begin operating in While the AP1000 schedule slid, CNNC nuclear energy sector. 2013 and 2014. and CGN raced to certify their own com- The AP1000’s ascent in China began Post-Fukushima safety inspections peting enhanced-safety design. in 2004 when the government launched and requirements have contributed to The Hualong One reactor design was a rigorous two-year evaluation aimed at the delays, but no more so than design certified by China’s nuclear authori- selecting an advanced Western reactor flaws and construction mishaps. In 2015, ties in 2014, and construction of the design that would underpin its future safety inspectors discovered that the first four units began in 2015 and 2016. nuclear sector. The Westinghouse reac- steam pipe exiting one of Sanmen’s reac- Since then, several projects originally tor beat out the latest French-German tor pressure vessels had been improp- slated to feature AP1000 reactors have EPR and Russian VVER designs, thanks erly installed. switched camps. Westinghouse and SNPTC, meanwhile, have recently shifted strategy, accord- CHINA NUKE TIMELINE: 10 Operational Connected to the grid If all goes according to ing to the World Nuclear Association. plan, 18 of the 20 nuclear 9 As of May 2017, AP1000s had accounted reactors currently under construction should come 8 for over half of the 38 reactors in the on line by 2021. But will 7 advanced planning stages. By August, the 40 units in the planning nearly all of the planned AP1000s had stages ever break ground? 6 been supplanted by an SNPTC domestic Under construction 5 adaptation of the Westinghouse reactor, 4 dubbed the CAP1000. Regardless of which design dominates,

Number of reactors of Number 3 20 a bigger question remains: How big a 2 40 piece of China’s overall energy sector will 1 nuclear command? Renewable power has 0 eclipsed nuclear in terms of investment Planning stage 2018 2019 2020 2021 and output. And at the current rate of construction, say analysts, China is likely to its promised blend of safety, afford- Meanwhile, water circulation pumps to fall short of its 2020 nuclear generation ability via modular construction, and critical to the reactors’ safe operation target. That goal was set at 70 to 80 giga- the company’s willingness to progres- had to be modified after delivery. The watts in 2010, then slashed to 58 GW after sively transfer ownership of the intel- massive pumps worked fine under nor- the Fukushima accident. But even with lectual property to China. mal conditions. But when the power the completion of all reactors being built China’s domestic nuclear giants, shut off, their blades stopped spinning— as of August 2017—several of which are China National Nuclear Corp. (CNNC) and cooling water stopped flowing— scheduled to start up in 2021—China’s out- and China General Nuclear Power Corp. before the AP1000’s signature passive put will be less than 56 GW. (CGN), opposed reliance on a Western cooling could kick in. Further endangering nuclear power’s design. So, in 2009, Beijing launched Such delays mean major cost over- prospects are the Chinese government’s a new entity, the State Nuclear Power runs. The projected cost to complete moves to cut wholesale rates for nuclear Technology Corp. (SNPTC), to oversee the AP1000 pair abandoned in South energy and a growing power supply glut. construction of two pairs of AP1000s: Carolina had spiraled upward from In Ramana’s view, China’s nuclear sec- the plants at Haiyang and Sanmen. $10 billion to an estimated $25 billion. tor may have already peaked: “The rapid The Fukushima accident, in 2011, The Chinese AP1000s’ ultimate price tag growth of nuclear power in China is a seemed to further cement the AP1000’s is hard to project. “We know very little thing of the past.” —Peter Fairley status as the preferred reactor for about the actual costs. The data sources ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/

the future, with its emphasis on pas- are pretty opaque,” says M.V. Ramana, nuclear1017 ASSOCIATION NUCLEAR WORLD SOURCE: CHART

12 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG A.I. Wins It’s a Tie Doctors Win

AUG 2017

MAY HEART ATTACKS 2017 & STROKES

Using 10 years of routine medical records from patients across the United Kingdom, an AI FEB system learned to predict which patients would 2017 suffer a heart attack or stroke. When University of Nothingham researchers compared the AI’s performance to the standard method, they found that the AI correctly predicted 355 more cases of cardiovascular events. JAN 2017 Full story

OCT 2016

JUN 2016

When researchers invent an AI to AI VERSUS DOCTORS diagnose disease or make a patient’s treatment plan, they sometimes com- Artificial intelligence is challenging doctors— pare its performance with that of medi- and we’re keeping score cal experts. The persistent questions: Will AI identify patterns that aren’t obvious to humans, with our limited visual In recent years, artificial all your friends). It didn’t take long for AI and information processing capacities? intelligence has proven to researchers to apply those special skills Is that an obvious advantage for AI, or be extremely good at under- to medicine, creating experimental AI does human judgment and intuition standing natural language systems that can read through the elec- still triumph over cold machine intel- (remember when IBM Watson beat its tronic health records of thousands of ligence? As the matchups continue, human competitors on the “Jeopardy!” patients, digest the 27 million articles we’re tallying the results online. Go to TV game show?) and categorizing images currently in the medical literature, and http://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-dr1017

IEEE SPECTRUM IEEE (which is how Facebook now recognizes find subtle patterns in medical images. for the interactive scorecard. ■

NEWS

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 13 NEWS

even hail a chair using the app—the Uber SELF-DRIVING of wheelchairs. The Whill Model M is also able to sync with nearby wheelchairs to travel WHEELCHAIRS DEBUT IN in a column, which is useful for a family or a group, the company notes. Best HOSPITALS AND AIRPORTS of all, each wheelchair automatically returns to its home base, reducing the A Singapore hospital and a Japanese airport test need for airport staff to collect the chairs. lidar-equipped chairs Panasonic hopes to expand use of the chair to large indoor facilities such as shopping centers, says Yamanaka. Autonomous vehicles can add a A second autonomous wheelchair Beyond hospitals and airports, the new member to their ranks—the recently premiered at Haneda Airport in SMART team says it envisions a connected self-driving wheelchair. This summer, Tokyo, designed by Panasonic and Whill, autonomous mobility system, where a two robotic wheelchairs made head- creator of the Model A Whill wheelchair, user could use a scooter or wheelchair lines: one at a Singaporean hospital and a sleek, high-tech wheelchair now on the indoors at an office, zip outside and pick another at a Japanese airport. market in Japan and the United States. up a golf cart to cross the parking lot, and The Singapore-MIT Alliance for Panasonic is planning to conduct tech- slip into an autonomous car to drive home. Research and Technology, or SMART, nical trials with five Whill Model M chairs Recent studies with the scooter suggest developed the former, first deployed at Haneda Airport this year, says Pan- the control algorithms work indoors as in Singapore’s Changi General Hospital asonic spokesperson Mio Yamanaka. well as out, according to a press release in September 2016, where it suc- last year. “The autonomous wheel- cessfully navigated the hospital’s chair could be very useful in any hallways. It is the latest in a string pedestrian environment—including of autonomous vehicles made by hospitals and airports—and we are SMART, including a golf cart, an exploring all these possibilities,” Rus electric taxi, and most recently, a tells IEEE Spectrum. scooter that zipped more than 100 Yet the field faces the challenge of MIT visitors around on tours in 2016. commercialization. Not all high-tech The SMART self-driving wheel- wheelchairs have sold well, such as chair has been in development Dean Kamen’s stair-climbing iBot, since January 2016, says Daniela whose US $25,000 price tag was one Rus, director of MIT’s Computer reason the device was discontinued Science and Artificial Intelligence in 2009. But hopefully the next gen- Laboratory and a principal investi- eration of wheelchairs won’t be as gator in the SMART Future Urban Mobility THE UBER OF WHEELCHAIRS: At Haneda expensive, says Rus. “The system consists research group. Today, SMART has two Airport in Tokyo, people with disabilities will of an off-the-shelf wheelchair augmented be able to hail autonomous wheelchairs using wheelchairs in Singapore and two wheel- a smartphone app that lets them select a with an autonomy package. We hope the chairs at MIT being tested in a variety of destination, sit back, and relax. price point of the autonomy package can settings, says Rus. come down to make the system afford- The robot’s computer uses data from Like the SMART wheelchair, the Whill able.” What may also help is that the Whill three lidars to make a map. A localiza- Model M uses lidars (two, in this case) to Model M has been granted clearance as a tion algorithm then determines where detect nearby obstacles. It also employs medical device by the U.S. Food and Drug the smart chair is on the map. The chair’s automation technology developed for Administration. That means doctors can six wheels lend stability, and the chair Panasonic’s autonomous (and adorable) prescribe the chair for their patients and is designed to make tight turns and fit hospital delivery robot, Hospi. “The at least part of the cost will be picked up through normal-size doorframes. “When routes are created based on the prepared by insurers. —Megan Scudellari we visited several retirement communi- map information and its position informa- ties, we realized that the quality of life is tion,” says Yamanaka. Then, an onboard A version of this article appears in our blog dependent on mobility. We want to make computer decides the best route based on The Human OS. it really easy for people to move around,” the chair’s position. Users choose their ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/

said Rus in a recent MIT statement. destination via smartphone app and can wheelchair1017 PANASONIC

14 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG $3.13 BILLION: WHAT THE U.S. SPENT IN 2016 ON HALLOWEEN COSTUMES. $420 MILLION OF THAT WAS ON COSTUMES FOR PETS.

WEARABLE TECH FOR HALLOWEEN THE GEMMA M0’S EMBEDDED PYTHON LETS YOU CHANGE YOUR CODE ON THE FLY

alloween is approach- H ing, and with it a global parade of costumes. So I thought this would be the perfect time to try out a new wearable microcontroller from Adafruit In- dustries: the Gemma M0. Adafruit has been putting out wearable microcontrollers for several years. These differ from conventional controllers, such as the Arduino Uno, in that the wearables are typically more compact and use pads with large through holes for input and output, instead of pins. These holes make it easy to sew boards to fabric or tie conductive thread to the pads. What makes the Gemma M0 particularly interesting is that it runs CircuitPython, Adafruit’s modified version of the Python language designed for embedded devices. (At this point, I MICROCONTROLLED should note that Limor Fried, the MONK: Touching a founder of Adafruit, is a member of capacitive sensor switches this costume’s IEEE Spectrum’s editorial advisory light display from board, but she played no role in the an eerie white glow origination of this article.) surrounding the mask to an upper-body animation in full color. RESOURCES_TOOLS

PHOTOGRAPH BY Randi Klett SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 15 CircuitPython caught my eye because Before I could start getting a feel for the thread’s tendency to fray at the ends, com- I’m the Spectrum editor who oversees our software, though, I needed to make my cos- bined with the close proximity of the pads, annual Top Programming Languages on- tume. I had a long, flexible strip of addressable made short circuits all too common, and the line interactive. In the interactive, we group WS1812B LEDs left over from making a color wrinkles that formed when the robe moved languages into different categories based organ for a local monthly musical hackathon, also caused cross-circuit connections. So I on their typical usage. For the past couple and a US $17 “Nylon Horror Robe” costume pulled out most of the thread and replaced it of years, I’ve been getting a small number purchased for a friend’s haunted house kids’ with old-fashioned wire. I left in only the thread of complaints because we don’t list Python party last year. So I decided to combine these I had used to make a capacitive touch sensing as an embedded language. (Even Guido van remnants with a cheap mask from an art sup- pad, as the length of thread required was short Rossum—Python’s creator—posted a huffy ply store and the Gemma M0. The goal was and connected only to the Gemma. tweet about it.) As the number of actual em- to make a costume that could switch from With the costume complete, albeit not the bedded Python deployments has been a “spooky” to “disco fun” on demand. most comfortable thing to wear, I turned to drop in the great software ocean, I’ve been I first cut the LED strip into short lengths: the software. Normally, this would mean writ- okay with our call, but if Python starts being 7 LEDs apiece for each of my forearms and ing code in the Arduino IDE, compiling it, and the basis of a notable share of makers’ micro- upper arms, 10 LEDs for the robe’s cowl, and uploading it to the board via a USB link. But controller programs—currently dominated eight strips of 8 LEDs for a 64-pixel chest dis- the Gemma uses a clever approach. Connect by the Arduino’s C/C++ style of code—we’d play. Using fabric tape and some reinforcing it to a host computer via USB and it will ap- need to revisit that decision. thread, I attached these LEDs to appropriately pear as a removable drive. The Gemma will sized pieces of felt as a backing support and automatically interpret and run whatever is sewed the felted LEDs into the costume. on that drive in a file called “main.py,” and you Now I needed a power source. WS1812Bs can open this CircuitPython file using the text operate best at 5 volts and are power hun- editor of your choice. This means you can do gry: At the maximum white brightness, each live coding with embedded devices: I could LED draws 50 milliamperes, which adds up adjust the timing or color choices in my LED fast. Meanwhile, the Gemma M0 can accept control code, save the file, and see the re- up to 6 V, but it operates at 3.3 V. After some sults instantly reflected in the costume’s be- experimenting, I settled on using 12 AA bat- havior. Once I was happy with the results, I teries. I divided the batteries into four groups, could simply unplug the USB connection. with each group wired in series to provide The downside of CircuitPython is that you 4.5 V. I also wired the groups in parallel so they don’t have access to the huge array of online would provide enough current to power the advice, code snippets, or third-party librar- LEDs, as long as I kept the overall brightness ies that are available for Arduino projects, al- dialed down, or illuminated only a subset of the though Adafruit has created libraries that lights. With just 4.5 V going to the LEDs, the cover the essentials, such as how to drive Gemma’s 3.3-V output is sufficiently above the LCD character displays. The Python interpret- 50 percent mark to control the strips without er also uses up a lot of the onboard space that the need for a voltage-level shifter. would otherwise be available for project code. Then I needed to wire everything together. Nonetheless, although it’s still available The 28-millimeter-wide $10 Gemma M0 has only on a few boards, CircuitPython is a fas- three input/output connections, which can be cinating alternative to the traditional devel- configured for digital or analog signals or act opment cycle. In cases where the code itself as capacitive sensors. I allocated one output to is pretty straightforward but requires a lot of the chest display and another to the limb and tuning parameters to produce optimal re- cowl LEDs. I used the remaining connection as sults, embedded Python has an advantage. a capacitive sensor to provide touch control: By Whether Python gains enough momentum tapping on the costume above my collarbone, I to make significant inroads into embedded can toggle through different display patterns. development will depend on whether this ad-

PRÊT-À-PORTER MICROCONTROLLER: The Initially, I tried to wire all this up using con- vantage is marked enough to persuade more coin-size Gemma M0 [top] can be easily sewn ductive thread. I anchored the thread to the hardware and software developers to defect onto fabric. The Gemma has few input/output LED strips by threading it through holes from conventional tools. —STEPHEN CASS connections, but that’s enough to control many devices via serial connections, such as the LED that I punched in the strips’ copper connec- matrix on the front of the costume. tion pads with a needle. Unfortunately, the ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/wear1017 CASS STEPHEN BOTTOM: INDUSTRIES; ADAFRUIT TOP:

16 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG RESOURCES_STARTUPS

Lerner, president and chief scientist at LPPFUSION LPPFusion, based in Middlesex, N.J. TO INITIATE FUSION, THE LPPFusion is building what it calls a Dense Plasma Focus (DPF) device. This consists of COMPANY’S DESKTOP DEVICE a thick, hollow central anode surrounded EXPLOITS INSTABILITY by a ring of cathodes that are about the size and shape of candles. And indeed, the whole thing looks rather like a candelabra. Here’s how it’s supposed to work: The device sits in a chamber filled with the gas to be fused at a low pressure, while a bank of external capacitors blast pulses of electricity down the electrodes, forming a plasma from the gas. In a millionth of a second, the electric blast reaches the top of the electrodes, and natural instabilities produce filaments of plasma. The pulse of current reaches the end of the electrodes, and the filaments combine and collapse near the mouth of the cathode. This produces microscopic balls of plasma called plasmoids. Further instabilities in the plasmoids produce electron beams, which heat up the plasmoids to the temperatures required for fusion. Still under peer review as of press time was a paper submitted to the journal Physics of Plasmas, in which Lerner and his coauthors claim to have produced a confined mean ion energy of 200 kiloelectron volts, equivalent to a temperature of over 2 billion kelvins. “As far as we know, that’s a record for any fusion plasma,” Lerner says. Whether a record has been shattered or not, Lerner now shares his company’s results with investors and the public. “In the critical measure of how much ince nuclear fusion’s earliest (ALMOST) TABLETOP FUSION: The heart of energy out we get per unit energy in, we’re days, the sun has served as the ul- LPPFusion’s device is a vessel filled with gaseous No. 2 among all the experiments in the S fuel at low pressure [top]. Inside, a blast of current timate prototype. It’s the closest down a set of electrodes turns the gas into world,” Lerner says. “And we’re only one- continuously functioning large-scale fusion plasma. Instabilities fuse plasma atoms [below]. third behind the JET [Joint European Torus] reactor, after all. Why not copy from the best? experiment in the United Kingdom—which So tokamaks, stellarators, and laser ignition has almost a thousand times our resourc- facilities all strive to create high-pressure es. In terms of results per unit dollar, we’re and high-temperature plasmas that behave clearly No. 1, by a long way.” like microcosms of the sun’s core. LPPFusion hopes to be the first to achieve One of the biggest challenges these sys- break-even nuclear fusion by fusing simple tems face is achieving the tight control they hydrogen nuclei (one proton, no neutrons) require over the plasma fuel they seek to fuse. with boron (five protons, six neutrons). Un- But one New Jersey fusion startup company like many of the big sunlike fusion projects is taking a very different tack: “Guide the that fuse different isotopes of hydrogen to-

LPPFUSION (2) LPPFUSION plasma’s instability; don’t fight it,” says Eric gether—such as JET, the National Ignition

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 17 RESOURCES_REVIEW

Facility, and ITER—proton- boron fusion produces no neu- 500 YEARS OF trons and thus no radioactivity HUMANOID ROBOTS from its primary reaction. The downside of proton-boron fu- AUTOMATA HAVE BEEN AROUND sion is that it requires even LONGER THAN YOU THINK higher temperatures and densities than does fusing deuterium and tritium. Which is why Lerner’s finding could be very significant. One competitor in the proton-boron fusion race is Tri-Alpha Energy, backed by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. The company, located in Foothill Ranch, Calif., was recently in the news for its collaboration with Google, which yielded a new AI-based fusion algorithm this summer. Says Heinrich Hora, emeritus professor of physics at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, Tri-Alpha may have higher-profile collaborators. But LPPFusion’s results arguably still give it a leg up. “The work of Eric Lerner may hen science fiction critics The exhibition is a visually dazzling dis- be more promising than what W Eric S. Rabkin and Robert E. play of human creativity and mechanical they do at Tri-Alpha, because Scholes argued in the 1970s that engineering from the 1500s to today. Visi- [LPP] has higher densities,” “no one would go through the trouble of build- tors are welcomed by a blinking, stretch- Hora says. “This is an argument ing and maintaining a robot to hand wash ing android baby, perhaps representing the in favor of Eric Lerner.” clothes or pick up the telephone receiver,” infancy of automation displayed in the first Now on a new crowdfund- they were apparently unaware that Japanese section, dubbed “Marvel.” A video clip of an ing campaign to upgrade its researchers had already made a long-term early Spanish automaton monk, some exqui- DPF reactor, LPPFusion says it commitment to develop humanoid robots site clocks, and an 18th-century silver swan hopes to be fusing proton and that could do exactly that. The goal was to care automaton represent a period when, the boron by next year. (The results for the elderly in the 21st century. To this end, curators argue, “likening the human body to LPPFusion has obtained to date throughout the 1980s and 1990s, industrial clockwork...led to the creation of the earliest have involved deuterium plas- giants Honda, Mitsubishi, and Toyota, as well robots.” Well, maybe. mas.) And whether the victor is as university research labs around the world, Ancient Egyptian shabtis, automated by Tri-Alpha, LPP, or someone else began demonstrating humanoid prototypes. magic spells rather than motors, were actu- altogether, the race to proton- More recently, the desire to operate in disaster ally the first expression of the human desire boron breakeven shows there’s sites like Fukushima has motivated even more to re-create ourselves as machines, as the even hope out beyond the sun. researchers to explore humanoid designs. exhibit pamphlet puts it. Expecting to have to —MARK ANDERSON But the dream of humanoid robots goes labor in the fields of the afterlife, people bur- back much further than the 1970s. The Sci- ied mummiform figurines with the deceased, Headquarters: Middlesex, N.J. ence Museum, in London, took a shot at expecting the figurines to do all the hard Incorporated: 2003 Employ- plumbing this history with its recent Robots work. Still, given the challenges of mounting ees: 4 Funding: US $5.5 million exhibition. (The exhibition closed in Septem- an exhibit like Robots, the result is impres- ber, but it will be touring locations throughout sive. The “Obey” section includes two beau- ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.

ieee.org/fusion1017 the United Kingdom until 2019.) tiful examples of craftsmanship inspired by AP AKMEN/GETTYIMAGES; TOLGA (3); IMAGES COURT/GETTY CARL AKMEN/GETTYIMAGES; TOLGA LEFT: FROM CLOCKWISE

18 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG the industrial revolution: a finishing lathe from the mid-1700s, which mimicked the handiwork of humans by producing geometrical designs for watch- cases and other objects, and an early 20th-century example of a Northrop automatic fabric loom. A wall of toys, models, and magazines, and a stage of full-size humanoids from science fiction films, including Maria from Metropolis and an endoskeleton from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, share the “Dream” section with early novelty and exhibition robots. Among them is a replica of Eric, the electrically powered mechanical man that helped open the Model Engineering Exhibi- tion in London (1928), and Cygan, built in 1957, which ended its performing career as a mascot for a car deal- ership in Sussex, England. Hobbyist-built humanoids welcome visitors to the “Build” area and show off synthetic speech and sensors that help them track human movements. The “Imagine” section represents the combined recent achievements of researchers in improving the relationship between robots and humans. Unlike earlier automata that were essentially wind-up toys with preprogrammed motions, robots of the 21st century are learning to sense human expression and movement, and to respond in useful ways. Among those on view here are RoboThespian, the first full-size humanoid to be commercialized (IEEE Spectrum covered its theatrical debut in New York City in 2015); Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Kodomoroid, a female humanoid robot “em- ployed” as a television newsreader; R ethink Robotics’ Baxter, a dual-armed industrial robot with a virtual face designed to fit into a human factory workspace (and another Spectrum favorite); the Shadow Dexter- ous Hand, which replicates the movement of a human hand; and several childlike humanoids designed to help children with learning and social deficits. Ironically, these child-friendly robots are typically either switched off or were unable to sense the children waving and yelling through the exhibit glass. Softbank Robotics Corp.’s NAO humanoid, whose advanced sensing and communication abilities make it a popular platform for the annual RoboCup, stood motionless. In his 1965 preface to the science fiction collection The Pseudo-People: Androids in Science Fiction, William F. Nolan called humanoid robots an inevitable development: “The android will duplicate the human form as nearly as possible; synthetic flesh will cover a body and brain made up of superbly designed electronic components.” He would have ap- IN THEIR MAKER’S IMAGE: The humanoid creations on display at the Science Museum preciated this exhibit. —LISA NOCKS include the Inkha robot receptionist [opposite page], an iron mannequin from the 1500s [top left], a creepy animatronic baby [top right], the Kodomoroid news reader [middle], the Baxter industrial robot [bottom left], and RoboThespian. ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/humanoid1017

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 19 NUMBERS DON’T LIE_BY VACLAV SMIL OPINION

Germany, inaccessible behind barbed wire and mine fields. It might as well have been a different planet. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had recently told the West, “We will bury you,” and now his boasts about the supremacy of Communist science and engineering were finding support in the United States’ near-panicky reactions. This latest demonstration of Soviet power led many of us to fear that it would not come to an end in time for our generation. It turned out that there had never been a real scientific or engineering gap: The United States soon gained decisive pri- macy in launching satellites for communications, weather forecasting, and espionage. Less than a dozen years after the surprise of Sputnik, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stood on the moon—a place no Soviet cosmonaut ever reached. And 11 years after Sputnik, the Soviet empire did weaken, if only temporar- SPUTNIK AT 60 ily, during the Prague Spring. Even Czechs who were not members of the Communist Party could get passports SIXTY YEARS AGO, ON FRIDAY, 4 OCTOBER 1957, the Soviet to travel to the West. So in August 1969, Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. Technically, it my wife and I landed in New York, just was a modest affair, a sphere 58 centimeters in diameter weighing weeks before the borders were closed almost 84 kilograms and sprouting four rodlike aerials. Although its for another two decades. three silver-zinc batteries made up some 60 percent of the total mass, they rated In 1975, shortly after we moved from only 1 watt, good enough to broadcast rapid shrill beeps at 20.007 and 40.002 the United States to Canada, the first megahertz for three weeks. The satellite circled the planet 1,440 times before major exhibition of the newly completed plunging to a fiery death on 4 January 1958. Winnipeg Convention Center showcased Sputnik should have come as no surprise. Both the Soviets and the United States the Soviet space program. A full-scale had revealed their intent to launch orbiting satellites during the International Sputnik model was hung by wires above Geophysical Year (1957–1958), and the Soviets had even published some technical the main lobby. As I rode the escalator details before the launch. In retrospect, it’s fair to call Sputnik just the inevitable and looked up at that shiny sphere, I first act in a long-running show. But that was not how the public perceived the lit- was transported back to 4 October 1957, tle beeping sphere in late 1957. when for me the beeping satellite sig- The Western world reacted with awe, the United States with embarrassment. naled not the glories of engineering and And the embarrassment only deepened in December, when the Vanguard TV3 science but fear that Soviet power would rocket, its launch hastily scheduled to counter the Sputnik effect, blew up on the go on for the rest of my life. launching pad just 2 seconds after liftoff. Members of the Soviet delegation to the We made it out, but as the French say, United Nations asked their U.S. counterparts whether they would like to receive plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. technical assistance under the Soviet program for undeveloped countries. Today Americans are worrying once This public humbling led to calls for accelerating the country’s space program, again about Russia, this time not about a for erasing the perceived technical lag, and for boosting education in mathemat- beeping satellite but about that country’s ics and science. The shock that the U.S. school system received was perhaps the power to influence the U.S. election pro- greatest in its history. cess and hack U.S. secrets. n All this had great personal significance for me. In October 1957 I was a teenager ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/ in Czechoslovakia, and every day, when I walked to school, I looked into West sputnik1017

20 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Stuart Bradford Sponsored by:

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dark markets), where the desperate and the desperadoes hire hitmen and arson- ists, and where trolls and dark-side hackers gather covertly in forums and chat rooms. This so-called darknet is hidden from view not because an HTML form is in the way but because it requires special tools to get there at all. The most common of these is Tor, a worldwide network of relays run by volunteers that anonymizes and encrypts traffic to the black Web’s typical .onion URLs (Tor is short for The Onion Router). The darknet seems like a place pop- ulated only by the lawless and the anarchic, but does it have anything to offer the rest of us? Consider, for example, that the Tor network itself has also received considerable U.S. government funding, in part to protect democratic movements in authoritarian regimes. And in 2014, the broadcaster Alan Pearce released a Kindle book called Deep Web THE DARK DIALECT for Journalists, with the aim of showing reporters how to keep themselves and Every aspect of human technology has a dark side, including the their sources safe on the Internet by bow and arrow. —Margaret Atwood using the techniques of countersurveil- lance, including secure communications PART OF THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE EARLY INTERNET was that and online anonymity. (I should note it was going to make the world a better place by giving voice to the here that these days people routinely masses and leveling playing fields. Light was the metaphor of choice. conflate the termsdeep Web and dark For example, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak once said that “when Web.) Some reporters are practicing the the Internet first came, I thought it was just the beacon of freedom.” • You can techniques of secure journalism, which easily make a case for how much “brighter” the world is now, thanks to ubiquitous include such darknet stalwarts as secure connectivity shining a light on misbehavior and malfeasance, but the Internet messaging, virtual private networking, has a dark side as well. • For example, when you enter a search term into Google and device encryption. and it spits out the results, you might think that the search engine spent those But there’s a counterargument few milliseconds querying the entire Web. Nope, not even close. What Google here, which is that anonymizing your indexes is a fraction of all the available Web, perhaps just 4 percent of the total, by online activity serves only to legiti- some estimates. That indexed soupçon is called the surface Web, or sometimes mize surveillance and will lead only to the visible Web. What about the other 96 percent? That nonsearchable content more powerful snooping techniques. is called the deep Web, dark Web, or sometimes the invisible Web. A related Instead, we should be trying to get gov- idea is dark social, those online social interactions that are not public and cannot ernments to stop spying on their citi- be directly tracked or traced (such as text messages and emails). • Most of this zens. Rather than wielding powerful hidden Web is obscured either because it resides within databases that are inac- anonymizing tools, World Wide Web cessible to search crawlers (because they require that information be entered into inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee says we an HTML form), or because those crawlers don’t have permission to access certain should be “going to protest so the world types of data (such as the personal info that people store within the cloud). • But outside becomes one where you don’t a significant subset of the hidden Web is the online equivalent of caves, lairs, and need to cheat to get around this prob- dungeons where hackers, criminals, and trolls gather. I speak now of the afore- lem.” Let there be light. ■ mentioned dark Web, the collection of websites where miscreants and malefac- ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/ tors go to buy or sell narcotics, weapons, and stolen goods (these are known as technicallyspeaking1017

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11-MEMB-0574b_IEEEtv_Spectrum_7x10_float_Final.indd 1 1/24/12 1:53 PM HEN BITCOIN WAS unleashed on the world eight years ago, it filled a specific need, for a digital Wcurrency that wasn’t under anybody’s control. But it wasn’t long before people realized the technology behind Bitcoin— the blockchain—could do much more than record monetary transactions. • That realization has lately blossomed 24 into a dazzling and often bewildering OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG array of startup companies, initiatives, corporate alliances, and research projects. Collectively, they’re facing a question that will have an enormous impact: What can the blockchain do better The than conventional databases? Billions of dollars will hinge on the answer in the next several years. • Can the technology Blossoming of link neighborhood buyers and sellers of rooftop-generated solar electricity? Can the Blockchain it keep track of property titles, academic transcripts, energy market credits, and THERE WILL BE A BLOCKCHAIN state licenses for health care providers? IN YOUR FUTURE, WHETHER Can it check the status of airline flights— YOU LIKE IT OR NOT and make reparations to weary travelers if their flights are delayed? We’ll soon see: All of those proposals have been embodied

Blockchain in blockchain-based agreements called smart contracts, which are being tested right now. • The schemes aren’t limited to startup-level experiments, either. Remember credit-default swaps? Those financial instruments that nearly crashed the global economy a decade ago? The world’s biggest clearinghouse for these contracts thinks it can make them more secure by switching them to a blockchain‑like largest concentrations of powerful computers system in 2018. If the plan works, makes millions for its owners. • These mines have US $11 trillion will be moving through been built in the parched sands of Mongolia for this system every year. • The future may one reason: cheap electricity. Each day, Bitcoin belong to smart contracts, but for now slurps a city’s-worth of energy to perform a small Bitcoin is still the biggest user of blockchain fraction of the transactions that major credit card technology, and it’s a major driver of networks accomplish. But there are other ways to innovation in computing hardware. Most run a cryptocurrency, and Intel thinks it’s found of that computing is dedicated to mining— one. Not coincidentally, the technique hinges on the process that runs the network and the proprietary workings of its own processors. • rewards those who do the work with newly Enthusiasts are sure that blockchain tech is going minted bitcoins. That computing is done to take over the world. To realists it could be the on purpose-built machines packed with solution to a few important problems. Regardless custom chips. To describe it firsthand, of who’s right, there are going to be blockchains IEEE Spectrum sent a reporter to the in your life. Whether they’re in the background or “mines” of Inner the foreground, you should understand how they’ll Mongolia, where work, and what could happen if they don’t. one of the world’s Illustrations by —Morgen E. Peck & Samuel K. Moore MARIO DE MEYER Blockchain

26 OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World By MORGEN E. PECK

Blockchain World

itcoin was hatched as an act of defiance. a repository and a replay platform for TV shows, Unleashed in the wake of the Great Recession, movies, and other digital media while keeping the cryptocurrency was touted by its early track of royalties and paying content creators? Can champions as an antidote to the inequities and a blockchain check the status of airline flights and Bcorruption of the traditional financial system. They pay travelers a previously agreed upon amount if cherished the belief that as this parallel currency took their planes don’t take off on time? off, it would compete with and ultimately dismantle If so, then blockchain technology could get rid the institutions that had brought about the crisis. of Uber, Netflix, and every flight-insurance pro- Bitcoin’s unofficial catchphrase, “In cryptography we vider on the market. trust,” left no doubt about who was to blame: It was Those three proposed applications aren’t hypo- the middlemen, the bankers, the “trusted” third parties thetical—they’re just a few of the things now being who actually couldn’t be trusted. These humans simply built on Ethereum, a blockchain platform that got in the way of other humans, skimming profits and remotely executes software on a distributed com- complicating transactions. puter system called the Ethereum Virtual Machine. In the blockchain universe, Ethereum, which has Bitcoin sought to replace the services provided by these intermedi- its own cryptocurrency, called ethers, is by far the aries with cryptography and code. When project that is most open to experimentation. But you use a check to pay your mortgage, a zoom out and a diverse collection of potentially dis- series of agreements occur in the back- ruptive innovators floods into view. New groups are ground between your financial institu- pitching blockchain schemes almost daily. And the tion and others, enabling money to go tech world’s titans don’t plan to miss out: Microsoft is from your account to someone else’s. offering its customers tools to experiment with block- Your bank can vouch that your money chain applications on its Azure cloud. IBM, Intel, and is good because it keeps records indicat- others are collaborating on an open-source block- ing where every penny in your account chain initiative called Hyperledger, which aims to came from, and when. provide the bones for business-oriented blockchains. PEOPLE Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies Satoshi Meanwhile, many of the largest banks—the very replace those background agreements Nakamoto institutions that blockchain pioneers were trying and transactions with software—specifi- to neutralize—have cobbled together their own ver- cally, a distributed and secure database If the blockchain sion of the technology in an attempt to stay ahead of called a blockchain. The process with were a religion, the curve. And even Bitcoin, which runs on the first which the ownership of a Bitcoin token Satoshi would and most successful blockchain, is being retrofit- will pass from one person to another— be God. This ted for applications its designers never dreamed of. wherever they are, no matter what gov- anonymous hacker Pretty much without exception, these new block- ernment they live under—is entrusted to is responsible chain projects remain unencumbered by actual a bunch of computers. for writing the mass adoption. No single blockchain concept or Now, eight years after the first block- Bitcoin white strategy has yet revolutionized any industry. Bitcoin chain was built, people are trying to apply paper, releasing itself is used by no more than 375,000 people in it to procedures and processes beyond the first Bitcoin the entire world on any given day, according to merely the moving of money with varying code, and Blockchain.info. But the investor dollars are pour- degrees of success. In effect, they’re ask- inspiring legions ing in, and proposals are floating and colliding ing, What other agreements can a block- of blockchain like tectonic plates on a hot undercurrent of hype chain automate? What other middlemen developers. Many and intrigue. can blockchain technology retire? have sought to When the mantle cools, which blockchain plat- Can a blockchain find people offer- reveal his/her/ forms will persist, and which will slowly sink back ing rides, link them up with people who their identity, beneath the surface? To make any kind of predic- are trying to go somewhere, and give but to this day tion, you’ve got to understand what a blockchain the two parties a transparent platform that information really is and what it does. The place to start, logi- for payment? Can a blockchain act as remains secret. cally enough, is with Bitcoin.

28 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG PREVIOUS PAGES: ILLUSTRATION BY Mario De Meyer; PHOTOGRAPHY BY The Voorhes HACKS & HEISTS

2016: Shortly after the Distributed Autonomous Organization debuted on the Ethereum blockchain, someone siphoned US $60 million in ethers from this autonomous version of a venture-capital fund. In a bold move, the Ethereum developers rewrote the blockchain code to return the money.

sary. Banks and payment processors have already partially sublimated our physical currency into digital records by tracking and processing transactions within their closed systems. Bitcoin completed the transformation by creating a single, universally accessible digital ledger, called a blockchain. It’s called a chain because changes can be made only by adding new information to the end. Each new addition, or block, contains a set of new transactions—a couple of thousand in late August—that reference previous transactions in the chain. So if Helmut pays Hendrieke a bitcoin, that transaction appears at the end of the chain, and it points to the transaction in which Helmut was previously paid that coin by Helche, which in turn points to the time before that when Helche was paid the coin by Halfrid, and so on. nnnnn Bitcoin’s blockchain, unlike the ledgers maintained by traditional financial institutions, is replicated on networked computers around the globe How Do and is accessible to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. A class of participants Blockchains on this network, called miners, is responsible for detecting transaction requests from users, aggre- gating them, validating them, and adding them to Work? The the blockchain as new blocks. Validation entails both verifying that Helmut Bitcoin Example actually owns the bitcoins in his transaction and that he has not yet spent them elsewhere. Owner- ship on the Bitcoin blockchain is determined by a In 2009, an anonymous hacker (or group of hackers) pair of cryptographic keys. The first, called the public key, resides going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto unveiled in the blockchain for anyone to see. The second is called the private the first entirely digital currency. The technology key, and its owner keeps it safe from view. The two keys have a spe- worked on the principle that, at its foundation, cial mathematical relationship that makes them useful for signing money is just an accounting tool—a method for digital messages. Here’s how that happens: Helmut takes a message, abstracting value, assigning ownership, and pro- combines it with his private key, does some calculations, and ends viding a means for transacting. up with a long number. Anyone who has the original message and Cash is the historic means of accomplishing these knows the corresponding public key can then do some calculations chores. Simply possessing the physical tokens— of their own to prove that the long number was in fact created with bills, coins—equals ownership, and it’s up to the indi- the private key. viduals to negotiate transactions among themselves In Bitcoin, transactions are signed with private keys that corre- in person. As long as cash is sufficiently difficult to spond to the public key most recently associated with coins being replicate, there is no need for a complete account- spent. And when the transaction gets processed, those coins get ing of who owns what portions of the money supply, assigned a new public key. or for the details of who the various holders were of But the main role of miners is to ensure the irreversibility of new a single $50 bill going back to when it was printed. transactions, making them final and tamperproof. The method they However, if you could piece together a running use for doing so is thought to be the most significant contribution tabulation of who held every bill, then suddenly the that Satoshi Nakamoto—whoever he or she is—made to the field of physical representations would become unneces- computer science.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY Nicholas Little SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 29 Blockchain World

Ensuring irreversibility becomes necessary only when you invite Any miner trying to add a new block must also anyone and everyone to take part in the curation of a ledger. If the provide a cryptographic proof to go along with it. Bitcoin blockchain were being run by a single bank with a set of In order to produce the proof, the miner digests known validators operating under a single jurisdiction, then enforc- the new block through multiple rounds of a hash ing the finality of transactions would be as simple as writing it into function—a computation that takes a chunk of data company policy and punishing anyone who didn’t follow the rules. of arbitrary length and reduces it to a meaningless But in Bitcoin, there is no central authority to enforce the rules. alphanumeric string with a fixed length, called a Miners are operating anonymously all over the world—in China, hash. To make the process more challenging, the Eastern Europe, Iceland, Venezuela—driven by a diversity of cul- blockchain algorithm demands that the resulting tures and bound by different legal systems and regulatory obliga- hash start with a certain number of zeroes. The dif- tions. Therefore, there is no way of holding them accountable. The ficulty comes from the fact that there is no way to Bitcoin code alone must suffice. To ensure proper behavior, Bitcoin predict what hash any given data set will spit out, uses a scheme called proof of work. and so miners run the computation over and over on their validated blocks, each time inserting a ran- nnnnn dom number into the data set. When that number is changed, a new hash results. When at last the m iners get the correct number of zeroes, they’re done. How Does Proof The first miner who finds a satisfactory hash then announces the new block to the other min- of Work Secure ers, who check it and append it to the full version of the blockchain that they are harboring on their computers. For performing all this work, miners Blockchains? collect a reward of newly minted bitcoins as well as any mining fees, which users voluntarily tack First, let’s be a bit more specific about the problem that public block- onto their transactions in hopes of pushing to the chains are trying to solve with proof of work. In this open peer-to-peer head of the line. network, miners—whoever is running the bitcoin code—are receiv- Think of hashing as a way of locking the blocks ing news of transactions and gathering them to create a new block. on a chain. Suppose you have a lock that requires a They are doing so in competition with one another, because the first key to close. You also have a huge pile of keys at your to create a valid block gets paid (in bitcoins) for that service. In this disposal, but you don’t know which one will work. situation, what’s to stop a miner from deleting previous transac- You have to try them one by one. When you finally tions in the blockchain after they have been added? While this type find the correct key, you leave it in the lock so that of reorganization does not enable a miner to steal coins, it could be anyone can check that it’s the right fit. used to spend the same coins multiple times. For instance, I could Theoretically, this work and the payoff that min- go to some unwitting merchant and pay for a cup of coffee with bit- ers receive act as incentives for good behavior. coins. If I were a miner, I could later go into my version of the Bitcoin Bitcoin miners are heavily invested in the network blockchain, remove the transaction, and send the modified chain that they serve, both in the electricity they con- out to my peers, thereby redepositing the bitcoins I spent back into sume and in the hardware they buy. Therefore, my own pocket. the thinking goes, they should be disinclined to Therefore, it is crucial that all miners on the Bitcoin network damage the currency in any way, including by have the same copy of the blockchain, and that all changes and taking any actions, such as double-spending, that transactions are irreversible. “The fact that they’re all playing might call into question the integrity of Bitcoin and the same music is very important for the music to sound good,” devalue the currency. says Stefan Thomas, a developer for Ripple, a bitcoin-inspired Such attacks are further thwarted because the digital currency. cost of changing the contents of old blocks is com- To keep all the musicians in sync, the Bitcoin mining software pounded by each new block that gets added to makes it very expensive—in terms of computing power and, therefore, the chain. When a new block is made, it contains electricity—to add new blocks and even more expensive to change the hash of the one before it. Any changes in old blocks further back in the record. blocks will result in invalid hashes for all subse-

30 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ALICE BOB

Miners & Signers EVERY BLOCKCHAIN needs a way to determine who will add the next block of data. Two strategies prevail: proof of work and proof of stake. Both randomly assign the right to add new blocks. CRYPTOGRAPHIC KEY DATA BLOCK But proof of work gives preference to those with more computing power. And proof ALICE TELLS the network she NETWORK OPERATORS, called miners or block signers, scoop of stake—of which there are wants to pay Bob. She uses a up a bunch of transactions to validate them. They check that the many versions, some wildly cryptographic key to digitally sign digital signatures are correct and that there are enough coins for complex—gives preference to off on the transaction, proving that the requested transactions. Then they put those transactions into those with more coins. she owns those coins. a new data block to be added to the blockchain.

PROOF OF PREVIOUS HASH VALUE DATA BLOCK NONCE HASH FUNCTION NEW HASH VALUE WORK (Bitcoin) THE BITCOIN MINER creates a hash from a particular set of data. If the hash does not begin with a particular number of zeros, the hash function is rerun using a new random number (the nonce). Including previous blocks in every new hash compounds the difficulty of tampering with older transactions.

PROOF OF PREVIOUS HASH VALUE TIME COIN AGE HASH FUNCTION NEW HASH VALUE STAKE (Peercoin) THE PEERCOIN BLOCK signer creates a hash from a set of data that includes coin age—a number indicating an amount of coins owned by the signer and how long they’ve owned them. If the hash does not begin with a particular number of zeros, the function is rerun using a new time stamp.

PAYING FOR SECURITY THE FIRST MINER or block signer to get the right hash adds their version of the block of transactions to the blockchain. They also get paid in newly generated coins [left]. As more blocks are added, it becomes harder and harder to hack old transactions [right]. MINERS AND THEIR NEWLY AWARDED COINS BOB & ALICE …40 MINUTES LATER

ILLUSTRATION BY Greg Mably SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 31 Blockchain World

quent blocks. Therefore, it is impossible to insert bogus modifications into a previous block without having to repeat all the work that was performed after that block. In that lock analogy, it’s as though the design for the lock at the end of the chain depends on all the locks that came before it. So changing one lock in the middle of the blockchain means having to find new keys for every lock after it. Bitcoin “deters misbehaving parties because the damage a misbehaving party can do is bounded by how much [computational] power he has,” says Emin Gün Sirer, a codirector of Cornell University’s Initiative for CryptoCurrencies & Con- tracts (IC3). By forcing miners to provide costly proofs and then repaying them for their work, Satoshi created the first viable peer-to-peer digital currency. Although these ideas were around from Bitcoin’s But he also solved a more general problem that had vexed computer inception, it would take several years and a 19-year- scientists for decades—consensus. Bitcoin, which has never been old computer science student in Toronto to make knocked off-line for any substantial period of time over the past them popular. In 2013, Vitalik Buterin devised an eight years, reliably incentivizes a network of potentially dishonest entirely new blockchain called Ethereum. The goal participants to process transactions and secure a single version of of Ethereum was to take what Bitcoin had done for those events. The result is an ever-growing chain of data that anyone currency and expand it into other realms. with an Internet connection can inspect and add to, and one that has Like Bitcoin, Ethereum uses a blockchain that proven remarkably impervious to attack. has its own currency, called ethers. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum uses transactions that are miniprograms, nnnnn called smart contracts, that can be written with an unlimited amount of complexity. Users can then interact with programs by sending them transactions How Can You Use loaded with instructions, which miners then process. In practice, this means that anyone can embed a a Blockchain to software program into a transaction and know that it will remain there, unaltered and accessible for the life span of the blockchain. Theoretically, with Ethereum, Do Other Things? you could replace Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Spotify, or any other digital service with new versions that It turns out that such a system may be useful for much more than would be invulnerable to censors and transparent in just money. Almost as soon as Bitcoin debuted, people began imagin- their policies, and which could operate indefinitely ing what other kinds of applications you could run on a blockchain if in the absence of the people who created them. you generalized the technology. When miners validate transactions, “The amazing thing is you can put a computer they are really running small programs that process the data and program on that network…and, similar to Bitcoin, deliver a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down on the transaction request. everybody on the system can agree on exactly what But what if they could run more complex programs, like the software happened and when it happened…I think that’s a for a social media network? And what if the blockchain were used to profound idea,” says Joseph Lubin, a founder of represent data other than simple currency transactions, like mes- Ethereum, who now runs Consensys, a Brooklyn- sages on an online forum? based incubator for decentralized applications.

32 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Nicholas Little THINGS TO DO WITH A BLOCKCHAIN

Self-Driving Cars: Cars can now drive themselves (sort of). Isn’t it about time they got an allowance? The blockchain startup Oaken Innovations is looking into equipping self-driving cars with cryptocurrency wallets for minor expenses like paying tolls and buying oil changes.

nnnnn have a small degree of trust among them but want to simulate the services of a neutral third party, as might be the What’s a case with banks when settling international wire transfers. Last year, R3—which recently raised US $107 million Permissioned from more than 40 institutions—released its first permissioned ledger, Corda. And Corda already has a competitor; J.P. Morgan, which left the R3 consortium this past spring, Ledger? has released its own permissioned ledger, called Quorum. The permissioned-ledger approach has also spread beyond banks to other industries that find themselves Concurrent with Buterin’s attempts to use block- serving as guardians to sensitive customer data. Many of these proj- chain technology to make a world-spanning com- ects are built with tools provided by Hyperledger, an open-source puter, another trend was pushing the technology project hosted by the Linux Foundation and backed by big tech firms. in the opposite direction, toward a more closed Hyperledger is building products for companies that want to work and controlled iteration of Satoshi’s masterpiece. with smart contracts but are hesitant to embrace open blockchains In September of 2014, a group of financial institu- like Ethereum and Bitcoin. tions—including Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and “People have to understand the actual concerns and the regula- J.P. Morgan—formed a consortium, called R3, to tory requirements that entities such as banks, insurance, and the explore how blockchains might improve the effi- health care industry have to adhere to. They cannot afford the risk ciency of payments between banks. [To see how and uncertainty that is introduced by some of the open systems,” far this has gone, read “Wall Street Occupies the says Jonathan Levi, creator of Hacera, an access-control manage- Blockchain,” in this issue.] ment system for blockchains. It didn’t take long for these institutions to realize that the open structure of blockchains like Bitcoin nnnnn and Ethereum ran counter to their needs. Of primary concern was the anonymity of users, who on open blockchains are represented by alphanumeric How Are Smart public addresses, providing no indication of their real-world identities. Banking laws in the United Contracts Really States and elsewhere forbid such anonymity. “We have to know particularly who our participants and counterparties are on these platforms,” says Tim Going to Work? Swanson, the director of market research at R3. Financial institutions are also legally required Regardless of what flavor of blockchain wins in the end, the smart to protect customer data and control its export contracts that will run on it will need a variety of supporting technol- across national or regional lines. Given that public ogies. These supplementary technologies are now being developed, blockchains replicate the entire transaction record to little fanfare, in the shadow of the blockchain carnival. And they on every computer in the network, it’s impossible will be absolutely crucial to the expansion of blockchain technology. to restrict the chain of custody while using them. “Once you’ve got smart contracts, a whole host of problems arise,” Thus was born the “permissioned ledger” says Ari Juels, a codirector of Cornell University’s IC3. These prob- approach to blockchain technology. In a permis- lems fall into a couple of categories. sioned ledger, the identity of people adding blocks For one thing, blockchains can’t store much data. That’s going to be a is known, and data in the system is viewable only problem for the many projects that, for example, propose to live-stream by selected parties. Because the right to create new video over the blockchain—there’s nowhere to put the video content. blocks is assigned by the people who run the code The Bitcoin blockchain records the inputs and outputs of every coin rather than by a lottery, there is no need for proof- on the network, as well as the content of an additional field that allows of-work mining or a cryptocurrency to pay for it. for up to a mere 40 bytes of metadata per transaction. That’s all. This kind of system is intended to be used in situa- Another problem with putting contracts on blockchains is that tions where all participants on a blockchain already blockchains by themselves don’t know what’s going on in the real

ILLUSTRATION BY Nicholas Little SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 33 Blockchain World

nnnnn world. That’s a problem if, say, your smart contract is a flight insurance system, because it needs to know when your flight really takes off and lands. Blockchains were Where’s All the never designed to query websites. “Anything they learn about the outside world has to be injected into them,” Money for This says IC3’s Juels. Ideally, developers will devise schemes for storing and accessing data in ways that do not reintroduce the Stuff Coming weaknesses—vulnerability to censorship and a reliance on potentially dodgy humans—that blockchains were invented From? to avoid. To accomplish that, developers will have to carefully consider which “trusted parties” they can actually trust. The problem of storing static data might be solved with distrib- If the many digital services that modern society has uted file sharing services, such as Protocols Labs’ Interplanetary come to rely on are to be rebuilt on blockchain tech- Database or Storj Labs’ decentralized cloud storage system. These nology, then someone is going to have to pay for all of are systems that would enable people all over the world to rent out the engineering and research that will have to be done. surplus space on their hard drives. Such schemes would work for a But how do you get money for those functions when blockchain-based smart contract system because the data would be what you’re trying to do is create a technology that— redundantly stored on multiple computers around the world, and if it succeeds—will destroy the valuable data many thus would always be available and difficult to censor. enterprises survive on? Ideally, open blockchains, As for importing real-time data into a blockchain, this could be like Ethereum, entrust custody of data to the peo- handled by what blockchain developers are calling “oracles.” These ple who created it, giving them the option to choose are services that get paid for reliably querying sources of real-time how they share it. In such an environment, it is no data and feeding it to smart contracts on the blockchain. longer feasible for a company to survive off a business At IC3, Juels has implemented an automated oracle called Town Crier. model that harvests and sells its customer’s browsing It’s meant to ensure that data injected behavior, purchasing history, or location data. Nor onto a blockchain comes from a trust- could blockchain companies rely on the restricted worthy source and hasn’t been tam- possession of their intellectual property, as programs How pered with. It uses a “trusted software” on an open blockchain are there for everyone to see. enclave on Intel processors. The chips Nevertheless, a potential funding mechanism for Smart run code behind a cryptographic blockchain-based businesses has already emerged: Contracts shield but still provide proof that the A new trend in blockchain funding called initial Work program was executed as promised. coin offerings (or ICOs, after initial public offer-

A passenger requests flight insurance The smart contract sends a request to an “oracle”— The smart contract then by sending ethers to a smart contract— a service that exists outside the blockchain—to verify uses that information to an application that exists on the Ethereum the flight details and gather historical information about determine if the offered blockchain—along with her flight information. that route. premium is adequate. If the

34 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Greg Mably THINGS TO DO WITH A BLOCKCHAIN

Educational Records: Most people would change some detail of their school records if they could. Today, principles and the fear of being caught keep us honest. But tomorrow it might be the blockchain. Sony and IBM are creating a new blockchain for tracking and storing diplomas, transcripts, and other kinds of educational records.

ing, or IPO) has turned out to be wildly lucrative, “Money is not the root of all evil. Equity is the root of all evil,” says although legally questionable. Joel Monegro, who left Union Square Ventures to start Placeholder, Groups that choose to fund their projects with ICOs a new fund devoted exclusively to blockchain technologies. design their smart contracts in such a way that a user His argument, which is often repeated by blockchain startup leaders, must own an app-specific coin in order to use the is that giving founders and employees equity in a company encourages app. These groups then create a bunch of the coins them to hoard that wealth rather than use it to improve their products. before their launch and sell them on the open market. An app-specific coin, on the other hand, is not only a financial In the nondigital world, it would be like someone instrument but the means for accessing a technology. It follows that opening a laundromat where you could use only cus- the more people use a service, the more demand there will be for tom coins to run the machines. And so, instead of just the token required to access that service. getting investors, the owner stamps out a bunch of “My incentive as a company is not to extract more profits but to get coins to sell to the public, which can then be traded at more usage, because the token appreciates in value with the usage prices determined by the value of the laundry service. of the service. You completely flip the incentives,” says Monegro. To date, over half a billion dollars has flooded In the United States at least, the ICO binge has likely come to an into blockchain companies by way of token sales, end. In late July, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sent and the last few months have seen an eye-popping a chill through the startup scene. It issued a warning that many of acceleration in the rate and price of new offerings. the ICOs reviewed by the department fell into the category of secu- This July, a blockchain project called Tezos set a rities and would therefore be bound by its rules. record by raking in over $200 million with an ICO. Nevertheless, the trailing edge of the tsunami of ICO cash is still Such astronomical investments have led some washing up on the shores of the industry. Only time will tell if it’s observers to complain that there is a grim hypocrisy put to good use. at work. “The blockchain entrepreneurs who are “Times have changed, and very quickly. Some of us early a dopters, pushing these schemes are really demonstrating all who struggled financially three and four years ago but held onto the avarice and cupidity which they ascribe to stan- their beliefs and their coins, are very well off now,” says Hacera’s dard financial services” and government-backed Levi. “We still need Bitcoin and Ethereum to operate at larger scales, currencies, says Preston Byrne, the cofounder of and enterprises need to decentralize more and secure their sensi- Monax Industries, an open platform for blockchain tive data. We are now facing a new and different kind of a challenge: developers. “So, when the money starts flowing in Given the vast amounts of money invested, it remains to be seen how their direction, they’re becoming equally careless many old-timers and newcomers will stay true to the cause and con- about the public—whom they once were.” tinue to work to change the world with the technology that already However, others argue that the ICO, as a new changed theirs.” n class of investment vehicle, is just as disruptive as the applications being funded. ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/blockchainoverview1017

smart contract accepts the The oracle uses information from If the flight is delayed, the contract pays the premium, it then asks the RealTimeFlightData to report the status passenger. If the flight is on time, the contract oracle to report on the status of the flight to the smart contract. pays itself. of the flight in question.

ILLUSTRATION BY Nicholas Little SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 35 Blockchain World

Feeding the Blockchain Beast If Bitcoin ever does go mainstream, the electricity needed to sustain it will be enormous By PETER FAIRLEY

itcoin “miners” are electromagnetic alchemists, effectively turning megawatt-hours of electricity into the world’s fastest-growing currency. Their intensive computational activity cryptographically secures the virtual currency, approves transactions, and, in the process, creates new bitcoins for the miners, as payment. n And it does another thing, too: It uses an absolutely stunning amount of power. The ever-expanding racks of processors used by miners already consume as much electricity as a small city. It’s a problem that experts say is bad and getting worse. n “The concern that people continue to debate is, where does this end?” says Michael Reed, head of blockchain technology for Intel. n The Bitcoin leech sucking on the world’s power grids has been held in check, so far, by rapid gains in the energy efficiency of mining hardware. But energy and blockchain analysts are worried about the possibility of a perfect storm: Those efficiency gains are slowing while bitcoin value is rising fast—and its potential transaction growth is immense.

There’s a silver lining, though: This troubling energy picture is inspir- That process of chaining blocks together provides Bing innovators such as Reed to come up with energy-saving approaches the security that has made Bitcoin hack-proof. But that would unleash the technology behind Bitcoin, allowing it to expand the process of writing new blocks, called mining, into applications for which it was never intended [see “Blockchains: How consumes a lot of energy, for several reasons. One is They Work and Why They’ll Change the World,” in this issue]. Develop- that each block of transactions must be encoded in ers of blockchains for such disparate applications as health care man- an iterative process called cryptographic hashing, agement and solar-power trading see Bitcoin’s energy-intensive design which is computationally intensive. It produces a as a nonstarter and are now crafting more sustainable blockchains. hash, which is a string of characters of fixed length, and it must begin with a specific number of zeros. To understand these new blockchains, first consider the existing Here’s why that takes a lot of computing. Blocks ones. A blockchain is a list of transactions—a ledger—maintained by are created by transforming the data associated with a community of users, rather than a central authority. It’s called a a group of transactions. That transformational pro- blockchain because new transactions are bundled into “blocks” of cess, known as hashing, isn’t inherently computa- data and written onto the end of a “chain” of existing blocks describ- tionally intensive. But to get a hash that starts with ing all prior transactions. the required number of zeros—it changes (typically

36 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG 103 Daily bitcoin mining revenues and energy costs, in US $ per billion hashes per second (Gh/s)

102 The most popular Banking crisis in Cyprus exchange, Mt. Gox, prompts a surge in is hacked, causing bitcoin buying a share sell-off Central processing unit

101

U.S. Senate holds hearings on Bitcoin Graphics processing unit

100 Field-programmable gate array (FPGA): Bitforce SHA256

FPGA: Butterﬂy Labs Mini Rig

10–1

Application-speciﬁc integrated circuit (ASIC): Avalon batch 1, European court rules 110 nanometers that bitcoins are not 10–2 subject to VAT ASIC: Antminer S1, 55 nm

ASIC: Antminer S4, 28 nm

10–3 ASIC: Antminer S7, 28 nm

ASIC: Antminer S9, 16 nm

10–4 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Sisyphean Slide: Daily revenues for mining bitcoins [white], in US dollars per unit of computational power, are generally somewhat higher than the daily energy costs [red] of running the computers.

increasing) after every 2,016 blocks or roughly every 256-bit cryptographic hashes every second, according to the all-things- two weeks—a miner has to tweak the data and then Bitcoin website Blockchain.info. That’s a 5 with 18 zeros after it, every hash it, check whether the result has the proper num- second. No entity tracks how much power it takes to sustain that level ber of zeros, and, if not, start over again. That process of computation. But estimates by independent researchers suggest it’s of hashing and rehashing usually goes on thousands around 500 megawatts—enough to supply roughly 325,000 homes—with of times and consumes lots of energy. the activity concentrated in China and a few other countries with cheap The first miner on the network to find a valid hash energy and, in some cases, loose regulations on emissions. uses it to create a block, adds it to the chain, and Because of all that calculation, the energy cost of Bitcoin is high in com-

, 2017, 28: 1–9 is then rewarded for this community service with parison with that of conventional financial transactions. For example, newly minted bitcoins. With many parties compet- according to one estimate, processing a bitcoin transaction consumes ing to win each block, no one party can gain con- more than 5,000 times as much energy as using a Visa credit card. trol over the currency and its ledger. Mining power is high and getting higher, thanks to a computational Bitcoin’s mining-based ledger-writing process is arms race. Recall that the required number of zeros at the beginning aptly known as “proof of work.” In June, the world’s of a hash is tweaked biweekly to adjust the difficulty of creating a

CURRENT OPINION IN OPINION CURRENT IN VRANKEN, HARALD SOURCE: SUSTAINABILITY ENVIRONMENTAL bitcoin miners were generating roughly 5 quintillion block—and more zeros means more difficulty. | CONTINUED ON PAGE 58

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 37 Blockchain World

Do You Need a Blockchain? This chart will tell you if the technology can solve your problem By MORGEN E. PECK

ccording to a study released this july by Juniper Research, more than half the world’s largest companies are now researching blockchain technologies with the goal of integrating them into their products. Projects are already under way that will disrupt the management of health care records, property titles, supply chains, and even our online identities. But before we remount the entire digital ecosystem on blockchain technology, it would be wise to take stock of what makes the approach unique and what costs are associated with it. n Blockchain technology is, in essence, a novel way to manage data. As such, it competes with the data-management systems we already have. Relational databases, which orient information in updatable tables of columns and rows, are the technical foundation of many services we use today. Decades of market exposure and well-funded research by companies like Oracle Corp. have expanded the functionality and hardened the security of relational databases. However, they suffer from one major constraint: They put the task of storing and updating entries in the hands of one or a few entities, whom you have to trust won’t mess with the data or get hacked.

Blockchains, as an alternative, improve upon this architecture in often pay transaction fees in amounts that are one specific way—by removing the need for a trusted authority. With constantly changing and therefore difficult to Apublic blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, a group of anonymous predict. And the long-term status of the software strangers (and their computers) can work together to store, curate, is unpredictable as well. Just as no one person and secure a perpetually growing set of data without anyone hav- or company manages the data on a public block- ing to trust anyone else. Because blockchains are replicated across a chain, no one entity updates the software. Rather, peer-to-peer network, the information they contain is very difficult a whole community of developers contributes to to corrupt or extinguish. the open-source code in a process that, in Bitcoin This feature alone is enough to justify using a blockchain if the at least, lacks formal governance. intended service is the kind that attracts censors. A version of Facebook Given the costs and uncertainties of public block- built on a public blockchain, for example, would be incapable of chains, they’re not the answer to every problem. censoring posts before they appeared in users’ feeds, a feature that “If you don’t mind putting someone in charge of a Facebook reportedly had under development while the company database…then there’s no point using a blockchain, was courting the Chinese government in 2016. because [the blockchain] is just a more inefficient However, removing the need for trust comes with limitations. version of what you would otherwise do,” says Public blockchains are slower and less private than traditional data- Gideon Greenspan, the CEO of Coin Sciences, a bases, precisely because they have to coordinate the resources of company that builds technologies on top of both multiple unaffiliated participants. To import data onto them, users public and permissioned blockchains.

38 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG Can a Does I Want traditional more than one database participant need a Block- technology to be able to meet your update the chain! needs? data?

DO YOU Does yes no yes no the data REALLY NEED need to be a blockchain? kept They can do private? some amazing things, but they Do you and all those yes no are definitely not updaters the solution to trust one every problem. another? Asking yourself Is this database likely Do you a handful of to be attacked or yes no need to control the questions censored? Do you need who can make on this chart redundant copies in changes to the multiple distributed blockchain can set you on computers? software? the right path Would to an answer. all the yes no You’ll note that participants there are more yes no trust a third reasons not to party? use a blockchain than there are yes no reasons to do so. And if you do choose a blockchain, be YOU DON’T YOU MIGHT NEED YOU MIGHT ready for slower NEED A A PERMISSIONED NEED A PUBLIC BLOCKCHAIN BLOCKCHAIN BLOCKCHAIN transaction (FAST (MEDIUM (SLOW speeds. TRANSACTION TRANSACTION TRANSACTION SPEED) SPEED) SPEED)

With this one rule, you can mow down quite a few and lack of governance—can be alleviated, in part, by tweaking the blockchain fantasies. Online voting, for example, structure of the technology, specifically by opting for a variation called has inspired many well-intentioned blockchain a permissioned ledger. developers, but it probably does not stand to gain In a permissioned ledger, you avoid having to worry about trusting much from the technology. people, and you still get to keep some of the benefits of blockchain “I find myself debunking a blockchain voting technology. The software restricts who can amend the database to effort about every few weeks,” says Josh Benaloh, a set of known entities. This one alteration removes the economic the senior cryptographer at Microsoft Research. component from a blockchain. In a public blockchain, miners (the “It feels like a very good fit for voting, until you dig parties adding new data to the blockchain) neither know nor trust one a couple millimeters below the surface.” another. But they behave well because they are paid for their work. Benaloh points out that tallying votes on a By contrast, in a permissioned blockchain, the people adding data fol- blockchain doesn’t obviate the need for a central low the rules not because they are getting paid but because other peo- authority. Election officials will still take the role ple in the network, who know their identities, hold them accountable. of creating ballots and authenticating voters. And Removing miners also improves the speed and data-storage capac- if you trust them to do that, there’s no reason why ity of a blockchain. In a public network, a new version of the block- they shouldn’t also record votes. chain is not considered final until it has spread and received the The headaches caused by open blockchains— approval of multiple peers. That limits how big new blocks can be, the price volatility, low throughput, poor privacy, because bigger blocks would take longer to | CONTINUED ON PAGE 60

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 39 40 OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG HEN BLOCKCHAINS first appeared nearly a decade ago as the technical backbone of Bitcoin, Wall Street Wthe world’s leading cryptocurrency, they seemed to offer the masses a way to cut Occupies the out the financial middleman. But now the big banks and other industry players are Blockchain finding ways to spin the new tool to their advantage. • Their blockchains share a FINANCIAL FIRMS PLAN vision that is precisely the opposite of the TO MOVE TRILLIONS IN ASSETS one laid out in the Bitcoin white paper, TO BLOCKCHAINS IN 2018 published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Like N akamoto

Blockchain himself (or herself), you can own bitcoins without even stating your real name; nobody is in charge; and anybody can check the history of any given transaction. The financial industry’s blockchains, however, are closed or, in their jargon, permissioned; to join one you must reveal your identity to a system administrator, who must then approve you. • Firms say a permissioned network is the best way to satisfy regulators and protect client privacy, keep a close hold on information removes the but purists argue very point of blockchains while threatening to that trying to create new problems both for companies and By AMY their clients. • In the past two years, giants such NORDRUM as BNY Mellon, Goldman Sachs, ING, Santander, and UBS have explored dozens of blockchain projects, and some of those are now moving beyond the proof-of-concept phase. One of the first to be released into the real world will come from a little-known financial corporation that mediates a US $11 trillion-a-year market for an arcane class of securities, the trading of which allows people to pay money to shed risk or make money by accepting it. Blockchain World

If all goes well, a far larger chunk of the quadrillion-dollar Robert Palatnick first heard about blockchains securities market, along with many of the administrative tasks three years ago from his son, a high schooler who performed by banks and brokerages, could soon be running on had bought a few bitcoins. “He lost money and I just corporate blockchains. told him, ‘That’s a lesson learned,’” Palatnick says. Today, as managing director and chief technol- Nakamoto’s paper sketched out a peer-to-peer financial network ogy architect of the Depository Trust and Clearing with no intermediaries to collect fees, botch a transfer, or trigger an Corporation (DTCC), in New York City, Palatnick economic meltdown. Transactions would be signed with a digital key is leading several projects to insert blockchains and recorded in a public ledger—the master source for all accounts— directly into the company’s daily operations. stored across many computers. This setup ensures that the history The DTCC is a financial utility that holds the books of the transaction can’t be altered. on which firms record their trades. It was estab- However, the first cryptocurrency exchanges and digital wallets lished by industry titans in the 1970s to manage were riddled with vulnerabilities, and the underlying public block- the flood of paperwork brought on by the rise of chains were difficult to scale up. Then in 2016 there was a high-profile securities trading. Almost every broker or insti- $60 million heist at the DAO, an autonomous investment fund that tutional investor in the world today who trades a ran on smart contracts placed atop Ethereum, the public block- U.S.-based security—whether a municipal bond or chain for ethers, a cryptocurrency rival to bitcoins. The funds were a share of Apple—settles it through DTCC. recovered, but it was a painful reminder that blockchains and their DTCC hopes that rejiggering its databases to run accoutrements are still written by humans, who inevitably make on a permissioned blockchain will save money. errors in their code. But the upgrade will ultimately change little That’s why financial firms have limited their own blockchain about the way the financial system works today. networks to clients who clearly identify themselves through digi As envisioned, it is still a proprietary system tal keys. These permissioned ledgers are carefully tailored to through which centralized players control trad- achieve a company’s specific goals, and they’re easier to fix if ing behind walled-off networks. something goes wrong When DTCC’s inaugural blockchain network “I think permissioned looks more like how the world works,” says goes live, in late 2018, it will be the industry’s Brian Behlendorf, executive director of the Hyperledger project. most ambitious implementation to date, handling “I think permissionless looks like how some people think the world $11 trillion worth of credit-default swaps. That’s should be.” a type of contract that allows one firm to pass To others, though, permissioned led- risk to another firm. Credit-default swaps were gers fall short of blockchain technol- invented in 1994 by bankers at J.P. Morgan. A decade ogy’s potential to enable all financial later, one breed—those tied to mortgage-backed transactions to run on a transparent, securities—helped ignite the U.S. financial crisis. decentralized system. It’s disappointing About 10 years ago, DTCC built an information to many early supporters of Bitcoin to warehouse on a mainframe that now handles see the momentum shift toward permis- 98 percent of all the world’s credit-default swaps— sioned networks, and away from open, a type of credit derivative. The warehouse does all public blockchains. the heavy lifting to keep track of who owes whom. HACKS & HEISTS “In some cases, the permissioned Today, roughly 1,200 firms rely on it to trade swaps, ones are a bit of a regression from what 2011 to the tune of 60,000 transactions per day. Bitcoin proved possible in 2009 back to Unknown hackers The system works well enough, but the pro- distributed database technologies, like used a bug in the cess of trading swaps is still inefficient in ways Paxos, that were developed in the ’80s Bitcoin code to that Palatnick believes a blockchain could solve. and ’90s,” says Peter Van Valkenburgh, create 184 million Today, every firm formats swaps in a slightly dif- research director at the nonprofit bitcoins out of thin ferent way. When two firms wish to participate Coin Center. “They’re seeking to address air. This remains in a swap, they must both submit orders to a soft- what is really low-hanging fruit in the IT the only instance ware program known as a matching service, which industry, which is systems implemented of Bitcoin itself makes sure the terms are consistent. Then, a final by conservative industries like banks.” being hacked. agreement is forwarded on to DTCC’s warehouse.

42 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATIONS: THIS PAGE BY Nicholas Little; PREVIOUS PAGES BY Mario De Meyer J.P. MORGAN DTCC MASTERCARD CISCO INTEL MICROSOFT

EEA WELLS FARGO AMERICAN EXPRESS IBM

Hyperledger* CITIGROUP

BANK OF AMERICA Consortiums GOLDMAN SACHS

Axoni CAPITAL ONE VISA

Chain

Digital Asset

Startups *R3 AND DIGITAL ASSET ARE HYPERLEDGER MEMBERS.

BANKS, CREDIT CARD PROVIDERS, and tech companies need help figuring BANKS out what blockchains can do for them. This chart shows membership in three CREDIT CARD Hedging Their leading blockchain consortiums, and which companies have worked with PROVIDERS or invested in popular blockchain startups. Many believe it’s still too early to TECH COMPANIES Blockchain Bets choose a winner.

During those handoffs, the swap is translated and the entry to Axoni’s proprietary blockchain, stored across multiple reformatted several times. nodes in the cloud. Tomorrow, Palatnick argues, buyers and sell- So far, DTCC has installed three nodes, and based on the original ers recording swaps directly to a blockchain business case, Palatnick expects the completed system will save the could use logic written into the agreement itself— company 20 to 30 percent in costs, compared with running swaps a “smart contract”—to automatically manage trades. through the mainframe. Eventually, firms that trade the most swaps Every firm could use the same software to record may choose to set up their own nodes by installing Axoni’s software, trade contracts, eliminating costly trade and pay- reaping even more savings across the industry. ment reconciliations. Because every computer, or Last year, Axoni built enough smart contracts to simulate the entire node, would store its own copy of the full history volume of credit-default swaps currently listed in DTCC’s warehouse. of swaps, firms could be certain they were trading Then it ran 85 tests, putting the system through the paces of a nor- on the latest information. mal trade and even pulling the plug on a node to see how the rest of This ability to access a “golden record” matters the network would react. because failing to have the most recent market data Afterward, DTCC said Axoni’s software posted a 100 percent success can cause a firm to lose out on millions of dollars. rate in achieving the desired result in each test. Once the project goes To avoid this, banks and brokerages pay hefty sub- live, all the Axoni code, or “secret sauce” as Palatnick calls it, will be scription fees to data services from Bloomberg and placed in escrow or submitted to the open-source Hyperledger project, Thompson Reuters. so that if Axoni goes out of business, the trading of swaps can continue. For more than a year, DTCC has been working When it’s deployed next year, the new swap network will first oper- with IBM and the blockchain startup Axoni to ate in the background, running parallel to the existing warehouse. develop a swap network on a unified code base But Palatnick’s goal is for it to replace that warehouse by the end called AxCore. When a swap is made, software by of 2018. From that moment, the entire $11 trillion global market for Axoni writes it into a smart contract and records credit-default swaps will be traded on a blockchain.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 43 Blockchain World

Before long, many more financial products may move to block- IBM and Microsoft have jumped into the fray with chains. Proponents have dreamed up countless ways the technology a suite of services to create specific projects running could improve the financial industry, by allowing real-time auditing, on permissioned blockchains. Microsoft has devel- enabling regulators to halt illegal transactions, or empowering inves- oped a middleware that provides features such as tors to trade without a broker or an exchange. a digital key vault and identity management and But some experts say that most of the time a blockchain doesn’t works with any blockchain that Microsoft deems offer much value beyond a traditional database or a basic messag- enterprise grade—Ethereum, for instance. ing service. Applying it too broadly, or expecting too much, they say, At IBM, most projects are based on Hyperledger will only lead to disappointment. Fabric, a distributed ledger with smart contracts “I’ve watched a lot of proof of concepts that haven’t really gone written in the programming language Go. Fabric anywhere,” says Jerry Cuomo, IBM’s vice president of blockchain also allows companies to subdivide a ledger into technologies. He estimates IBM has worked on blockchain projects sections, which IBM’s Cuomo likens to Slack chan- for 400 companies in the past few years. So far, barely a dozen of nels, in order to broadcast transactions only to those have moved into production. participants on the same channel. Corporate enthusiasm for blockchains ramped up in 2016 and gen- A number of efforts are also under way to develop erated a swarm of press releases, but little is known about how most of permissioned offshoots, or forks, of Ethereum. those early projects fared. “To be honest, we don’t have much data pub- These forks are open source and infused with licly about the health of these PoCs,” Ian Lee, a director with Citibank’s corporate-friendly features that the public chains venture investment division, told the audience at Consensus, an annual lack, such as the ability to broadcast a transaction blockchain conference held in May. only to the parties involved, which is similar to Still, the mood at Consensus was jubi- what Fabric offers. Depending on how forks are lant—the prices of several leading crypto configured, participants can use ethers to pay for currencies had swollen that quarter. transactions or special tokens based on ethers that The emcee, flanked by backup dancers are accepted only on a specific fork—a type of digi- dressed in gold, opened the conference tal Monopoly money. with a song to celebrate that growth. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, a consor- Meanwhile, financial companies are tium of businesses interested in blockchains, has running up against some very real con- adopted J.P. Morgan’s open-source Quorum frame- straints in their own blockchain bets. work as its basis. Another group, known as R3, has PEOPLE Developers are still figuring out how to Richard a separate blockchain-inspired project called Corda make simple applications, write smart that is more like Fabric, in that it mainly functions contracts that are defensible in court, Gendel Brown as a distributed ledger. and keep their employers out of trouble In 2015, the world’s In general, though, blockchain development is with regulators. To help, several consor- largest banks dived still a jumbled mix of techniques and tools. Even tiums and companies are trying to set headfirst into the though financial firms have invested millions of standards, create open-source software blockchain craze dollars into the pursuit, there is still no widely tools, or develop platforms that can plug and formed a accepted reference architecture or standards for into any blockchain. consortium called a blockchain-based network. “Every vendor is Startups such as Axoni and Chain are R3. Richard Gendel kind of creating their own version,” says Palatnick. writing industry-friendly code bases Brown, R3’s chief This disparate approach can make it difficult to that clients can adorn with special appli- technical officer, compare features such as security. Jesse McWaters cations (called DApps for “decentral- used its financial of the World Economic Forum, who coordinated a ized applications”), typically executed brainpower to recent report on blockchain technology in finance, through smart contracts, to run across create Corda, says developers must find a way to conduct security many servers. With custom-built appli- a distributed audits on all blockchain networks, so the industry cation program interfaces and software ledger designed and public can feel confident in their use. development kits, clients can adapt specifically With those growing pains in mind, Laurence these DApps for their own purposes for financial Leblond, head of operations for Unigestion, a finan- and integrate them with legacy systems. agreements. cial services company based in Geneva, is pro-

44 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG ILLUSTRATION BY Nicholas Little ceeding cautiously. “For us, all the challenges of blockchain are about the security of the platform,” she says.

On Guernsey, an island in the English Channel famous for its high concentration of financial firms, Unigestion recently adapted a private investment fund to run on a distributed ledger. The fund is small, with Unigestion one of just two investors, but the firm believes private equity could be a big area of opportunity for blockchain technology. “Our intent is to manage the whole life cycle of the fund on the blockchain,” says Arijit Das, a senior vice president at Northern Trust, which adminis- Blockchain Lingo ters the fund on behalf of Unigestion. BLOCKCHAIN: app development both to a set of known For now, Unigestion’s new system is in shadow A shared database on blockchains, it actors. It’s also called a mode, mirroring the existing fund while Leblond that grows only by involves the sale private blockchain. appending new data, of cryptocurrency awaits the results of a security report. In order authenticates users before the software is PROOF OF STAKE: for more blockchain-based projects to take hold, with strong cryptog‑ released to the public. A mechanism for experts say the financial industry still needs to raphy, and leverages The cryptocurrency allocating the right to economic incentives to typically gives users add new blocks of data agree on standards, develop easy-to-use program- encourage mistrustful access to the app to a public blockchain. ming modules, and clarify regulatory uncertainties. strangers to manage under development. Participants gain the Working through those issues can be frustrat- and secure updates. right to add new blocks MINERS: The individu‑ by proving they own ing. That’s why Tom Jessop, who left his managing BLOCK SIGNERS: als that add new blocks cryptocurrency. director job at Goldman Sachs earlier this year to The actors in a proof- to public blockchains become president of the startup Chain, says block- of-stake blockchain that use proof of work, PROOF OF WORK: that are responsible for such as Bitcoin. Their A mechanism for chains have momentarily slid into the “trough of validating transactions actions both secure allocating the right to disillusionment.” That’s the phase in the infamous and adding them to the entries on a public add new blocks of data Gartner “hype cycle” that follows the peak frenzy the blockchain. blockchain, and pro‑ to a public blockchain. vide a mechanism for Participants (miners) of investor interest and then, with luck, proceeds ETHEREUM: A public the distribution of new gain the right to to a “plateau of productivity.” blockchain designed coins. They gain the add new blocks by Many firms are still waiting for that maturation to store and execute right to add new blocks repeatedly running smart contracts and by spending computa‑ a hash function. in order to feel confident in rolling out blockchain- other complex soft‑ tional resources, and based systems. “Everyone’s a little skittish here ware apps. It features the network rewards PUBLIC BLOCK- because we’re dealing with real assets and real its own cryptocurrency, miners by allocating CHAIN: A blockchain ethers. The first ver‑ new coins to them. that is open for anyone money,” says Hyperledger’s Behlendorf. sion of the software to look at and to add And if the financial industry truly wants to adopt was released in 2014. ORACLE: An entity new blocks to. Certain blockchains as its own, it should practice extreme that records data resources (computing HASH FUNCTION: about real-world power, possession patience throughout this process. “You have to take An algorithm that events—such as the of the native crypto baby steps,” says Tim Swanson, director of market digests a chunk of data ambient temperature currency) may be research for R3. “Financial systems cannot break.” of arbitrary size and or the outcome of a required to add new turns it into a string of presidential election— blocks, but anyone has Blockchain technology may well prove itself capa- numbers and letters of on a blockchain. It the right to do so. ble of handling many aspects of the financial sys- fixed length, called a serves as a reference tem more aptly than humans ever could. Whether hash. The function is a for smart contracts. SMART CON- one‑way operation used TRACTS: Software- it will shift the balance from walled-off, corporate in blockchains to choose PERMISSIONED based agreements networks to wide-open, distributed systems will which participants LEDGER: A data‑ deployed in systems boil down to which we ultimately choose to trust. n update the chain. base, inspired by capable of automati‑ blockchain technology, cally executing and ICO: Initial coin offering. that restricts access enforcing the terms ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/banking1017 A way of funding new to reading, writing, or of the contracts.

ILLUSTRATION BY Nicholas Little SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 45 Bitcoin

46 OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG The Bitcoin Mines of China Photography by STEFEN CHOW Text by MORGEN E. PECK

Blockchain World

n the dusty, sunbaked land surrounding Ordos, a city in China’s Inner Mongolia, sits one of the world’s largest bitcoin mines. Encircled by coal-fired power plants, rare earth mineral extraction sites, and the skeletal remains of abandoned, half-constructed housing complexes, the Bitmain Technologies bitcoin mine is evidence of a new economic boom in the area. n Every 10 minutes, a new block of data is added to the Bitcoin blockchain, the accounting ledger that records every transaction made with the currency. And every 10 minutes, a shiny new cache of bitcoins is deposited into the digital pocket of the person whose computer added Ithe most recent block. Miners compete for the right to add new blocks by running a single calculation, the SHA-256 hash function, over and over as fast as they can. This essentially enters them into a lottery with all other miners on the network. The rewards of this lottery now amount to over US $8 million worth of bitcoins every day. n Half of this goes to miners in China, who own a majority of the hashing power on the Bitcoin network, according to a new study by University of Cambridge researchers. Their proximity to manufacturers of specialized hardware and their access to cheap land and cheap electricity make Chinese miners the natural beneficiaries of the Bitcoin system, which rewards efficiency and hustle above all else. n In addition to its huge mining assets, Bitmain also happens to be the world’s largest supplier of bitcoin-mining ASICs—integrated circuits that are specifically customized for the task of unearthing new bitcoins. With 21,000 machines, collectively computing approximately 250,000 trillion hashes per second, Bitmain controls nearly 4 percent of the computing power on the Bitcoin network from the Ordos mine alone. n Photographer Stefen Chow and I visited the mine on 12 July. For a deeper dive into what makes these mines work, see http://spectrum.ieee. org/bitcoinmine1017.

48 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG Speedy Installation

THE FASTER THE machines are plugged in, the sooner they can begin gulping down electricity and turning it into money. Racks of bitcoin mining rigs run the length of seven warehouses at Bitmain’s Ordos facility, which is in a constant state of upgrade.

Compact Power AT ORDOS, BITMAIN has installed its most sophisticated mining rigs, Antminer S9s [left]. Each houses 189 ASICs customized to run the SHA-256 hashing algorithm. A single machine can compute between 11.5 trillion and 14 trillion hashes every second, according to company estimates. Haste Makes Money A TANGLE OF networking cables is evidence that the building was constructed and the equipment installed at breakneck speeds [far left].

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 49 Harsh Conditions INNER MONGOLIA HAS some of the cheapest electricity prices in the world (4 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour, a government-reduced rate), which is the primary reason miners are setting up shop here. But it comes with a trade-off: The climate outside Bitmain’s warehouses can be brutal, especially in the summer. Engineered Breathe In for Endurance EACH WAREHOUSE IS swathed in a fine netting [above, top] to keep pollen and dust from getting BITMAIN’S MINING MACHINES inside. Windows have been removed from one full have been engineered to side of the warehouse and replaced with desert tolerate extreme temperatures fans—panels of twisted metal [above, bottom] that get and fluctuating environmental doused with water from a pipe running along the top. conditions. “Our miners are As air enters the warehouse through these desert fans, operating in both hot and cold the water evaporates and cools the interior. climates and sometimes in cheap data centers without temperature control,” says Peter Holm, director Heat Shields of integrated circuit design at Bitmain. “One of the important jobs THE LAYOUT OF the mining racks [left] is being of the controller is to manage the reconfigured to maintain a cool side and a hot fan speed, voltage, and frequency of side. The machines are set up on a single rack that each ASIC during startup and in the traverses the entire length of the warehouse. The presence of ambient temperature fans are aligned to shoot hot air out behind the variation. The firmware algorithms machines into the hot side of the warehouse, and for this are very carefully tuned.” Still, a barrier is set up to keep the air from circulating the machines must be protected as back. On the hot side of the warehouse, industrial much as possible from Ordos’s heat fans [far left] blow air back out into the courtyard. and dust. Temperatures on this side exceed 40 °C (104 °F).

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 51 Blockchain World

The Cost of Something’s Wrong Downtime SOFTWARE MONITORS THE operating status [far right] of the thousands of mining rigs DESPITE THE EFFORT put into and alerts workers when one has failed. The protecting the ASICs from dust machines themselves also report when they’re and heat, rigs inevitably break failing with a red indicator light. Once the rig is down while they’re churning extracted, workers test the ASICs that perform out their digital lucre. With the the critical hash calculations, searching for current price of the bitcoin (it was duds [above]. trading for about US $4,600 as this article went to print), each Antminer S9 rig earns the owners Fix It around $18 per day. When the full fleet is up and running and IN THE REPAIR shop [right], workers manually bitcoin prices are above $4,000, tend to broken rigs, fixing fans and replacing the Ordos mine makes at least chips. At each workstation, scavenged jar caps $300,000 per day. But every are filled with new ASICs ready to be glued into time a machine fails, that number place. Workers remove heat sinks from circuit falls slightly. boards and replace any failed chips.

52 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG Home Sweet Repair Shop ONE BUILDING ON the grounds houses a lunchroom, operational center, repair shop, and dormitory. A few dozen employees run the entire facility. Their jobs include scanning the racks for malfunctioning machines, cleaning the cooling fans, fixing broken rigs, and installing upgraded machines. Many of the employees are recent engineering graduates from the local university.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 53 Blockchain World

Govern by Blockchain Dubai wants one platform to rule them all, while Illinois will try anything By AMY NORDRUM

overnments everywhere would like to cut red tape, reduce bureaucracy, and speed the delivery of services. But constituents are still often frustrated by mounds of paperwork and the snail‑like pace of official business. Could a blockchain help? n Just as blockchains have shaken up the financial industry and changed our perception of money, some government agencies now believe the technology could rejuvenate the public sector. Proponents argue that its immutability will protect records from fraudsters, its transparency will keep employees accountable, and its ability to automatically process new entries can make agencies more efficient. n Such promises have persuaded city, state, and federal governments to launch the first batch of public-sector blockchain experiments. Two of the most enthusiastic early adopters have been the U.S. state of Illinois and the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. And intriguingly enough, the two have adopted very different strategies for mixing blockchains into government.

In Dubai, the city government is taking a highly centralized approach to invest in new technologies. Robert Charette, an Gby building a single software platform through which agencies will expert in IT risk management, doubts blockchains launch many blockchain projects. In Illinois, the process is designed will prove to be more effective than a simple cloud to be more experimental, with individual projects testing different database in most cases. “It’s kind of like solving a types of blockchain platforms and applications to find the best fit for problem that’s already been solved,” he argues. their particular needs. Dubai begs to differ. The city government’s platform, Other government organizations may not be far behind. Mark Fisk, which has not yet been built, will support both the a partner in IBM Global Services Public Sector, has met with 35 U.S. public blockchain Ethereum and a distributed ledger federal agencies this year to talk about blockchains. Then in June, code base called Fabric, created by the open-source the General Services Administration, the procurement arm of the project Hyperledger. This year, that platform will be U.S. government, began to explore how the technology could hasten the launchpad for dozens of g overnment-sponsored its review of new IT contracts. blockchain projects. Officials say it will help the city Despite all the activity, nobody knows now whether blockchains can government go paperless by 2020. deliver meaningful results for public agencies. Blockchain develop- To kick things off, Smart Dubai, the government ment is still a nascent field. And governments are notoriously reluctant office leading the project, has asked 25 agencies to

54 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG as the deed is filled out properly and the buyer’s account has enough money to cover the sale. Once the transaction is complete, the blockchain will hold the official record. No one—not even government employees—can alter it. Hediah believes Dubai’s decision to run all of its projects from a shared platform will make that platform more powerful as the city’s blockchain initiative grows. “The impact will be huge,” she insists. “When you apply a blockchain to so many services across so many sectors, there’s definitely going to be a jump in efficiency that nobody today can measure.” Illinois, though, has a different idea. With help from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportu- nity, the state is launching five separate blockchain pilots. Each project’s staff will select its own technology provider to develop a specific application without much regard for what the other four are doing. Why the separate approaches? Block- chain companies are still figuring out how to program applications and smart contracts for public services, notes Jennifer O’Rourke of the Commerce and Economic Opportunity department. She argues that this multiblockchain strategy will help projects find the right solution. The five Illinois pilots will use block- each begin a pilot before the end of 2017. The goal chains to handle property titles, academic transcripts, vital records, is for the best of those projects to move into pro- energy market credits, and state licenses for health care providers. duction at some point next year. O’Rourke expects to have them up and running by the end of this year. Lina Hediah of ConsenSys, a blockchain consul- For now, she’s not too concerned about how these pilots will work tancy working with Smart Dubai, says at least two together, or whether the blockchain selected for one project can be easily projects will focus on real estate. The Dubai Land integrated with others. Interoperability, she believes, will come over Department, for example, could use the platform time as the technology matures. “Our approach is to not focus on one to transfer property deeds or sign rental contracts. partner or one technology protocol but to explore all of them,” she says. Similar projects are already under way in Sweden Will governments around the world end up regarding the projects and the republic of Georgia. in Illinois and Dubai as eye-openers or as black eyes? We’ll know in a If implemented in Dubai, a property deeds project year or two. In the best case scenario, blockchains will make some would work like this: Whenever a property is pur- government transactions more secure and streamlined. The red tape chased, the buyer and seller will record the trans- won’t go away, but it just might be a little less sticky. n action on one of the two blockchains sanctioned by Dubai. They’ll receive instant approval, so long ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/government1017

ILLUSTRATION BY Greg Mably SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 55 Blockchain World By MORGEN E. PECK & DAVID WAGMAN

Energy Trading for Fun and Profit Buy your neighbor’s rooftop solar power or sell your own— it’ll all be on a blockchain

ould you pay slightly more for your electricity if you knew it was sourced from photovoltaic panels on your neighbor’s roof? Or, if you are that neighbor, would you use your solar power to charge a battery and dump that energy back onto the grid at peak hours, when the price was highest? The answers to these questions—which depend on how people would behave in an open energy market—are unknown, because that market does not exist. Net metering and feed-in tariff programs, the two dominant schemes for reimbursing residential energy production, pay out at a fixed rate, effectively decoupling producers from the price signals that might otherwise direct their behavior. n But that may be changing. And we may have the blockchain to thank. Multiple projects are now under way to use technology that was originally intended to account for transactions in digital currency to track electricity production and put it up for sale.

“The future is moving toward distributed energy, distributed gen- to continue growing, from around 95 megawatts in Weration for local businesses and for consumers,” says Susan Furnell, 2016 to more than 3,700 MW by 2025. an energy industry consultant based in London. “It needs a new set If used properly, additional energy sources at the of technologies and a new set of business processes and a way of edge of the grid could help manage demand more interacting to make all of that work.” efficiently. But some experts argue that this will For over a century, the electricity grid has been a top-down business happen only if the people who own these generating with utilities and big power generators sending electricity to custom- assets are fully incorporated into an energy market ers. But with the proliferation of renewables, the grid is rapidly trans- that sets prices in real time. Only then will residen- forming into a two-way street, where consumers at the end of the lines tial energy producers know when their product is (the “edge of the grid”) are themselves putting power back on the lines. most needed, and therefore most profitable. This The global market for rooftop photovoltaic panels was nearly US $30 bil- timing information will also give these producers lion in 2016 and is expected to grow by 11 percent over the next six years, the ability to do the most good for the grid. according to a study by Research and Markets. Meanwhile, the shift “What that looks like is a more resilient, fast-acting, toward solar is being complemented by an increase in the adoption of transactive grid at the grid edge, where you can residential energy storage systems, whose ability to deliver is predicted pay somebody to turn things off, pay somebody to

56 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG UPSTAIRS AND DOWN: Daniel Power’s Brooklyn bookshop has rooftop solar panels [above] that will be part of a blockchain-based energy trading scheme. The TransActive Grid meter [left] allows users to purchase locally generated electricity.

ing them of the energy available. A smartphone application then ties the whole thing together. For now, the application shows residents only where renewables are located in their area and how much energy they are producing. The next step for the project will be a feature that allows neighbors to set the prices that they are willing to pay. At that point, the TransActive Grid blockchain will begin actually recording transactions among neighbors. Consumers will be able to slide a bar on the application interface to indicate the maximum price they are willing to pay for different energy sources in their network. Producers can then set their price and begin loading their contributions onto the grid when there is a matching bid. As the laws of physics demand, customers in discharge a battery, pay somebody to start up gen- the TransActive Grid network will use whatever electrons are flow- eration at the right time, and send the economic sig- ing closest to them on the grid. But the system is intended to make nals to get people to do that stuff,” saysL awrence sure that customers’ money goes to the sources they want to support. Orsini, the CEO of LO3 Energy. The ledger for TransActive Grid will serve as an alternative account- That’s where blockchain technology comes in. ing system, in addition to the one that Consolidated Edison Co., the Orsini’s company is using it to send those economic local utility, keeps for its billing purposes. Turning these records into signals. With a project called TransActive Grid, a real market will require convincing Con Edison or an energy retailer LO3 Energy has installed 200 smart meters in five serving the Brooklyn market to settle transactions in real dollars. neighborhoods in the borough of Brooklyn, in New That will happen very soon, Orsini claims. “We’re in the very final York City—areas that are speckled with rooftop stages of that,” he tells IEEE Spectrum. photovoltaic installations. In houses that produce In September, TransActive Grid planned to offer the software on renewable energy, the meters record the supply the Apple App Store so that other neighborhoods can start their own and send it to a custom-built blockchain. Neighbors community markets. of these producers have their own smart meters, A similar project is under way in Germany, where the battery supplier

SASHA SANTIAGO/LO3 ENERGY (2) ENERGY SANTIAGO/LO3 SASHA which act as their nodes on the blockchain, inform- Sonnen is partnering with the grid operator | CONTINUED ON PAGE 61

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 57 FEEDING THE Bitcoin will be using as much electricity as Denmark. BLOCKCHAIN BEAST In certain places, Bitcoin’s power Earn a CONTINUED FROM PAGE 37 drain may already be straining grids. Master’s Degree The Bitcoin algorithm adds these zeros in Mining took off recently in Venezuela, order to keep the rate at which blocks are where bitcoins make an attractive alter- in Electrical added constant, at one new block every native to the bolivar, largely worthless 10 minutes. The idea is to compensate now because of hyperinflation. Ear- Engineering— for the mining hardware becoming more lier this year, Venezuelan authorities and more powerful. When the hashing shut down a mining operation whose entirely online is harder, it takes more computations 11,000 computers were allegedly run- to create a block and thus more effort ning on power that was being siphoned to earn new bitcoins, which are then illegally. The drain apparently caused Take on a added to circulation. a backlash amid the country’s severe “If you try to work harder, the algo- electricity shortages. principal role rithm makes it more difficult,” says Intel’s Reed says that Bitcoin’s sustain- in implementing Harald Vranken, a computer scientist ability in terms of power usage is tough infrastructures at R adboud University, in Nijmegen, to predict. He cites such factors as the Netherlands. “It’s a very circular game.” periodic reduction in the number of bit- of any scale Vranken says doing today’s calcula- coins that miners earn for adding a block. tions would “consume way more power “It’s a very complex set of inputs,” he says. No GREs or thesis than is generated on the entire planet” What Reed is sure of, however, is that required if it were done using the CPUs available the world’s power infrastructures could when Bitcoin launched in 2009. What has not handle many more blockchains run- prevented such disruption is a series of ning on Bitcoin’s computationally inten- hardware upgrades: Miners began aban- sive proof-of-work mining scheme. Request doning the CPU for the more-efficient He notes that the leaders of Ethereum— graphics processing unit around 2011, the world’s second most popular cryp- Brochure and by 2013, chipmakers were producing tocurrency, which started trading in worldcampus.psu.edu/ application-specific integrated circuits 2015—are planning a switch to a non- eespec (ASICs) just for bitcoin mining. competitive alternative algorithm called Today’s state-of-the-art Bitcoin ASICs proof of stake. Instead of miners bat- complete a 256-bit hash 100 million tling for block-hashing rights, the net- times as fast and with one-millionth the work would assign block-adding rights to energy of a 2009-vintage CPU, Vranken “forgers” based on their relative holdings says. Yet more efficiency gains are pos- of Ethereum currency (known as ethers). sible by optimizing data centers from This scheme would slash Ethereum’s the ground up to power and cool bitcoin- energy footprint by eliminating the mining ASICs [see “The Bitcoin Mines of mining process and its computational China,” in this issue]. arms race. The problem is that chip efficiency Reed’s team at Intel is working on a gains are slowing [see “Efficiency’s Brief novel energy-saving blockchain sys- Reprieve,” IEEE Spectrum, April 2015] tem that relies on security features and, according to Vranken, are losing built into the chipmaker’s CPUs. Intel’s ground against Bitcoin’s exponentially Hyperledger Sawtooth blockchain soft- rising exchange rate and rates of hash ware randomly selects which users will computation. Another Dutch researcher, write each block. Its proof-of-elapsed- Sebastiaan Deetman, says an “enormous time scheme idles all users’ code for ran-

U.Ed.OUT 18-WC-0541/sms/sss increase in hash rate” over the last year domly determined intervals. The first to or so has likely pushed Bitcoin’s global awaken adds the latest transactions to draw closer to 700 MW. the blockchain and wins compensation. And if the hash computations acceler- What prevents participants from ate further? In that case, Deetman, who tampering with the code to get a larger is a doctoral candidate in industrial ecol- share of the blocks, says Reed, is that ogy at Leiden University, sees Bitcoin they must run Sawtooth code on Intel power demand ballooning 20-fold— CPUs equipped with its Software Guard to 14 gigawatts—by 2020. If that happens, Extensions (SGX) technology. SGX com-

58 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG bines protected areas of memory for code execution with a remote system for verifying its sanctity, enabling Intel to determine whether code has been tampered with. Several blockchain application developers have signed on, Reed says, including PokitDok, a provider of platforms for sharing health care data. Ted Tanner, WEBINARS PokitDok’s chief technology officer and cofounder, expects several applications EMSCAN October 3 at 1:00 PM ET: by the end of 2017, including an identity- Diagnose and debug board level EMC validation system to link patients with Compliance Problems their medical records and automatic adju- dication of some health insurance claims. October 4 at 2:00 PM ET: At Cornell University, meanwhile, PZFlex researchers are using Intel’s SGX to one- Modeling of Electromechanical up the chip giant. Team leader Ittay Eyal Sensors & Systems says their system fixes an unintended waste-encouraging aspect of Intel’s COMSOL OctoberOc 12 at 2:00 PM ET: blockchain scheme, which his team Fluid-Structure Interaction Analysis of calls the stale-chip problem. Miners in a Piezoelectric Intel’s proof-of-elapsed-time scheme will have a financial incentive to use the cheapest SGX-enabled CPUs available, predicts Eyal. This will extend the use of outmoded, inefficient CPUs, he says. WHITE PAPERS Eyal’s team presented its alternative Sequential Peeling: A Model-Based code in May. In their proof-of-useful- Anritsu work system, participants win blocks by Approach to Structure Identification and getting credit for doing their own work- De-embedding – This whitepaper related computations within the SGX. A discusses one of the model-based pharmaceutical firm, for example, could approaches that uses position information run simulations of molecules interacting about structures in the fixture and an and simultaneously establish its block- indicated impedance/admittance model to writing status. The firm would want to extextract parameters of that particular use the fastest chips available rather structure. than outdated chips, Eyal argues. This preference, his group estimates, should National Instruments Fundamentals to Building a Test System: make proof-of-useful-work blockchains Automated Test Power Infrastructure – at least 25 times as efficient as Intel’s. A power budget and layout ensures all Eyal says that lower-energy- components operate properly by avoiding consumption blockchains relying on bottlenecks where a component may need secure hardware will support many more power than the power distribution can applications. But he predicts that such provide. blockchains will not find favor with security-obsessed cryptocurrency users. “The Bitcoin community will Supermicro Unified SStorage: Software Defined not be open to trusting Intel—or any- Storage Made Easy – This whitepaper one else, for that matter,” Eyal declares. outlines how to implement Unified Storage In other words, blockchain technol- to achieve greater flexibility and cost ogy writ large may have a sustainable savings vs. proprietary storage appliances. future, but the power-sucking Bitcoin leech will probably remain ravenous for the foreseeable future. n Find out more! spectrum.ieee.org/webinars ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/beast1017 spectrum.ieee.org/whitepapers blockchain, and therefore who can see tainty what Bitcoin will look like in the DO YOU NEED A it. It’s not a perfect solution; you’re still next month, year, or decade—or even BLOCKCHAIN? revealing your data to those within the who will decide that. And the same goes CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39 network. You wouldn’t, for example, want for every public blockchain. to run a permissioned blockchain with With permissioned ledgers, you know get around. As of July, Bitcoin can han- your competitors and use it to track infor- who’s in charge. The people who update dle a maximum of 7 transactions per mation that gives away trade secrets. But the blockchain are the same people who second. Ethereum tops out at around permissioned blockchains may enable update the code. How those updates are 20 transactions per second. applications where data needs to be made depends on what governance struc- When blocks are added by fewer, shielded only from the public at large. ture the participants in the blockchain known entities, they can hold more data “If you are willing for the activity on the collectively agree to. without slowing things down or threat- ledger to be visible to the participants but Public blockchains are a tremendous ening the security of the blockchain. not to the outside world, then your pri- improvement on traditional databases Greenspan of Coin Sciences claims vacy problem is solved,” says Greenspan. if the things you worry most about are that MultiChain, one of his company’s Finally, using a permissioned block- censorship and universal access. Under permissioned blockchain products, is chain solves the problem of governance. those circumstances, it might just be capable of processing 1,000 transac- Bitcoin is a perfect demonstration of the worth it to build on a technology that sac- tions per second. But even this pales in risks that come with building on top of rifices cost, speed, privacy, and predict- comparison with the peak throughput an open-source blockchain project. For ability. And if that sacrifice isn’t worth of credit card transactions handled by two years, the developers and miners it, a more limited version of Satoshi Visa—an amount The Washington Post in Bitcoin have waged a political battle Nakamoto’s original blockchain may reports as being 10 times that number. over how to scale up the system. This balance out your needs. But you should As the name perhaps suggests, permis- summer, the sparring went so far that also consider the possibility that you sioned ledgers also enable more privacy one faction split off to form its own ver- don’t need a blockchain at all. n than public blockchains. The software sion of Bitcoin. The fight demonstrated ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/ restricts who can access a permissioned that it’s impossible to say with any cer- needablockchain1017

CPMT Society Has a Name Change! Dear Society Members, We are happy to announce that the CPMT Society name change to Electronics Packaging Society has been approved by the IEEE Board of Directors! We need your support to realize the intended benefits:

Improved Society Branding The IEEE Electronics Packaging Society is an ■ Shorter, simpler name international technical community of scientists ■ Growing Industry recognition that packaging and engineers engaged in the research, design is strategic in all areas of electronics and development of revolutionary advances in microsystems packaging and manufacturing. EPS promotes close cooperation and exchange More inclusive and better representation of technical information among its members and of the broad FoI of our society others through its technical conferences and ■ Simple name helps to not exclude topics: Eg. workshops worldwide, peer-reviewed publications, “Manufacturing” in our name could imply exclusion technology webinars and online educational of “Research” focus which is also part of our FoI. materials, and local networking via Chapter activities ■ Makes it clear that our focus is every niche and and collaboration with other organizations. aspect of packaging and interconnection of ICs We invite you to visit our website (http://eps.ieee. org) for details on how EPS can help support Improved clarity will result in increased your technical and professional growth. You’ll collaboration with other IEEE societies find conference listings, technical presentations, Chapter locations and contacts, opportunities ■ Packaging topics showing up more in other societies’ conferences and workshops for professional recognition through EPS and the IEEE Awards Program, including IEEE Senior ■ Our society wants to be a source of expertise to member and Fellow grades; and much more. work with other societies to make this successful

60 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG “What about forecasting of consump- energy that residents add to the grid is BLOCKCHAINS FOR tion and generation? If you want to offer competition—competition that makes FUN AND PROFIT 1 kilowatt-hour, [available] tomorrow at use of the utility’s own infrastructure. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 57 five, and you offer that and someone buys, “You may imagine this is a pretty big TenneT Holding to record and coordinate you have to actually deliver.” disruption for the whole utility business,” the operation of several thousand resi- An increase in the efficiency at the says Olaf Lohr, the director of business dential energy storage systems. This led- edge of the grid does not necessarily development at Sonnen. “If you really ger will be built on a variant of blockchain align with the business model of cen- think this all the way through to the end, technology called Fabric—a product of tralized utilities. These companies are we may not really need the utility that Hyperledger, which is a collaborative block- accustomed to making their money by much anymore, or maybe not at all,” he chain project run by the Linux Foundation. investing in large power plants and pay- says. “That’s why it’s really significant.” n Europe may be an early adopter of ing for those investments by selling as blockchain technology, says Steve much energy as possible. The renewable ↗ POST YOUR COMMENTS at http://spectrum.ieee.org/utilities1017 Callahan, vice president for energy and utilities at IBM, one of the companies contributing to Hyperledger. That’s because markets there are not as frag- New Version! mented as in the United States—with its dozens of investor-owned utilities, multi- tudes of municipal utilities, and 50 independent state regulatory authorities. “The hotbed is in Europe, predomi- nantly Germany and Denmark,” which have liberalized markets, Callahan says. In the United States, Texas, New York, and a handful of other states have opened their retail markets sufficiently to potentially allow blockchains to be tested, he says. Both the TransActive Grid and the project in G ermany are opting for “permissioned ledger” technology, where the only participants are preapproved electricity customers and vendors. But other developers are working on providing similar services on open blockchains—systems more like B itcoin and Ethereum, in which anyone can participate. C onsensys Systems, a blockchain studio in Brooklyn, has an application very similar to TransActive Grid in the works for the Ethereum blockchain. By enabling transactions between individual suppliers and consumers of energy, all of these projects seek to optimize the functionality of renewable power sources, using market logic to encourage producers to bolster the grid Over 100 New Features & Apps in Origin 2017! at times of peak consumption. For a FREE 60-day But if these markets are to compete Over 500,000 registered users worldwide in: evaluation, go to ◾ with utilities, they will have to deliver 6,000+ Companies including 20+ Fortune Global 500 OriginLab.Com/demo ◾ 6,500+ Colleges & Universities and enter code: 8547 energy reliably. Some are still waiting ◾ 3,000+ Government Agencies & Research Labs for proof that such delivery is possible. “When it comes to smaller and even residential customers, there are many issues,” says Diego Dal Canto, an innovation man- 25+ years serving the scientific & engineering community ager at Enel, a multinational utility in Rome that is developing a b lockchain-based market for energy wholesalers in Europe.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 61 The Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Division of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer University of Michigan, Ann Arbor invites applications for junior Engineering (ECE) at the University of Toronto invites applications for or senior faculty positions, especially from women and under- up to four tenure-stream faculty appointments at the rank of Assistant represented minorities. Successful candidates will have a relevant Professor. The appointments will commence on July 1, 2018. doctorate or equivalent experience and an outstanding record of Within the general field of electrical and computer engineering, we achievement and impactful research in academics, industry and/ seek applications from candidates with expertise in one or more of the or at national laboratories. They will have a strong record or com- following strategic research areas: 1. Computer or Communications mitment to teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels, to pro- Engineering, with preference for a focus on machine learning, computer viding service to the university and profession, and to broadening security and privacy, or data science; 2. Electrical Power Systems, with the intellectual diversity of the ECE Division. The division invites preference for a focus on power systems protection; 3. Systems Control, with preference for a focus on robotics. candidates across all research areas relevant to ECE to apply. Applicants are expected to have a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer The highly ranked ECE Division (www.ece.umich.edu) prides it- Engineering, or a related field, at the time of appointment or soon after. self on the mentoring of junior faculty toward successful careers. Ann Arbor is often rated as a family friendly best-place-to-live. Successful candidates will be expected to initiate and lead an independent research program of international calibre, and to teach Please see application instructions at: at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Candidates should have demonstrated excellence in research and teaching. Excellence in http://www.eecs.umich.edu/eecs/jobs/ research is evidenced primarily by publications in leading journals or The review of applications will begin November 10, 2017, and ap- conferences in the field, presentations at significant conferences and plicants are strongly encouraged to submit complete applications strong endorsements by referees of high international standing. Evidence by that date for full consideration. of excellence in teaching will be demonstrated by strong communication skills, a compelling statement of teaching submitted as part of the The University of Michigan is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer application highlighting areas of interest and accomplishments, as well with an Active Dual-Career Assistance Program. The College of Engineering is as strong letters of recommendation. especially interested in candidates who contribute, through their research, teach- Eligibility and willingness to register as a Professional Engineer in ing, and/or service, to the diversity and excellence of the academic community. Ontario is highly desirable. The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto ranks among the best in North America. It attracts outstanding students, has excellent facilities, and is

ideally located in the middle of a vibrant, artistic, diverse and cosmopolitan Florida A&M University-Florida State University city. Additional information may be found at http://www.ece.utoronto.ca. College of Engineering Review of applications will begin after October 3, 2017, however, the The FAMU-FSU College of Engineering in Tallahassee, Florida position will remain open until December 11, 2017. You must submit is seeking new faculty members in strategic areas.We are recruiting your application online, by following the submission guidelines given at leaders in engineering research and higher education with specialties in http://uoft.me/how-to-apply. Applications submitted in any other way will not be considered. • Biomedical Nanomaterial • Controls • Cyber Physical Systems Security • Robotics As part of your online application, please include a curriculum vitae, a • Optimization • Sustainable Infrastructure summary of your previous research and future research plans, as well • Systems Engineering as a statement of teaching experience and interests. Applicants must Appointments will be made in the appropriate department — Civil and arrange for three letters of reference to be sent directly by the referees Environmental, Chemical and Biomedical, Electrical and Computer, (on letterhead, signed and scanned), by email to the ECE department at Industrial and Manufacturing, or Mechanical Engineering. Joint [email protected]. appointments are possible. Faculty members can be recruited at Assistant, Associate or Full Professor level depending on experience. In The University of Toronto is strongly committed to diversity within some cases we may recruit more than one person in a given area. Our its community and especially welcomes applications from racialized faculty earn or are offered tenure in one of our two partner universities. persons / persons of colour, women, Indigenous / Aboriginal People of North America, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ persons, and others The FAMU-FSU College of Engineering is a partnership between Florida who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas. Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) — the leading public Historically Black College or University — and Florida State University As part of your application, you will be asked to complete a brief Diversity — one of the nation’s Highest Research Activity Universities (Carnegie Survey. This survey is voluntary. Any information directly related to you Classification). Our college offers a unique research and entrepreneurial is confidential and cannot be accessed by search committees or human engineering education to one of the most diverse student bodies in the resources staff. Results will be aggregated for institutional planning nation. Our growth plans leverage our unique capabilities and environment, purposes. For more information, please see http://uoft.me/UP. following strategic directions summarized in our research annual report found here: www.eng.famu.fsu.edu/research/report/. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, To apply please consult this page: www.eng.famu.fsu.edu/ Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority. employment/. Please apply before December 15th if possible. Florida A&M and Florida State Universities are Equal Opportunity Employers committed to diversity and inclusion.

62 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG California State University, Fresno Lyles College of Engineering Invites Applications for Two Tenure-Track Faculty Positions for Fall 2018 Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Area (A): MMIC Design, Microwave and Millimeter Wave Circuit Design, Machine Learning, Bioelectronics, and Biosensors University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Area (B): Embedded Systems, Internet of Things (IoT), Advanced The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Digital Logic Design, and FPGA/ASIC Design Urbana-Champaign (ECE ILLINOIS) invites applications for full-time faculty positions Candidates are expected to teach a broad spectrum of at all levels and in all areas of electrical and computer engineering, broadly defined, courses in the Electrical and Computer Engineering with particular emphasis in the areas of bio-electronics, bio-computation, bio-imaging curricula, as well as carry out scholarly work in their including MRI, and health; machine learning, control, and optimization for dynamic technical area of expertise. Other duties include student advising and mentoring, project and thesis complex systems; robotics; machine vision; power electronics and electric machines; supervision, and university service at all levels. quantum computing; cybersecurity and reliability; embedded computing systems and the internet of things; networked and distributed computing; data-centric computer systems An earned Doctorate (or ABD status) and a and storage. Applications are encouraged from candidates whose research programs are Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related area are required. in core as well as broad interdisciplinary areas of electrical and computer engineering. For further details, application procedures, and Applicants for positions at the assistant professor level must have an earned Ph.D. university information, visit jobs.fresnostate.edu or equivalent degree, excellent academic credentials, and an outstanding ability or fresnostate.edu/engineering/jobs. Review of to teach effectively at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Successful applications will begin on 11/01/2017. candidates will be expected to initiate and carry out independent research and to California State University, Fresno is committed perform academic duties associated with our B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. programs. to maintaining and implementing employment policies and procedures in compliance Senior level appointments with tenure are available for persons of international stature. with applicable state and federal equal Qualified senior candidates may also be considered for tenured full professor positions as employment opportunity laws and regulations. part of the Grainger Engineering Breakthroughs Initiative (graingerinitiative.engineering. illinois.edu), which is backed by a $100-million gift from the Grainger Foundation. ECE ILLINOIS is in a period of intense demand and growth, serving over 3000 students and averaging 7 new tenure-track faculty hires per year in recent years. Faculty in the department carry out research in a broad spectrum of areas and are supported by world-class interdisciplinary research facilities, including the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the Information Trust Institute, the Parallel Computing Institute, the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, as well as several industrial centers and programs that foster international collaborations. The ECE Department also supports and encourages faculty involvement with the Nation’s first engineering-based College of Medicine that is opening on campus in the fall of 2018. The plans are to facilitate transition from engineering breakthroughs into translational medical practices. The department has one of the very top programs in the United States, granting approximately 450 B.S. Make a world degrees, 100 M.S. degrees, and 75 Ph.D. degrees annually. ECE ILLINOIS is housed in its new 235,000 sq. ft. net-zero energy design building, which is a major campus addition of difference with minimal carbon footprint. Bring the promise of technology, and the In order to ensure full consideration by the Search Committee, applications must be knowledge and power to leverage it, to people around the globe. Donate now to the IEEE received by November 15, 2017. Applications will be reviewed until suitable candidates Foundation and make a positive impact are identified. Interviews and offers may take place before the deadline but all applications on humanity. received by the deadline would receive full consideration. Salary will be commensurate with · Inspire technology education qualifications. Preferred starting date is August 16, 2018, but is negotiable. Applications · Enable innovative solutions for social impact can be submitted by going to http://jobs.illinois.edu and uploading a cover letter, CV, · Preserve the heritage of technology research statement, and teaching statement, along with names of three references. For · Recognize engineering excellence inquiry, please call 217-333-2302 or email [email protected]. The University of Illinois conducts criminal background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer. Discover how you can The University of Illinois is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action employer. Minorities, contribute today. women, veterans and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply. For more Learn more about the IEEE Foundation at information, visit http://go.illinois.edu/EEO. To learn more about the University’s ieeefoundation.org. To make a donation now, commitment to diversity, please visit http://www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu. go to ieeefoundation.org/donate. We have an active and successful dual-career partner placement program and a strong commitment to work-life balance and family-friendly programs for faculty and staff (http://provost.illinois.edu/ faculty-affairs/work-life-balance/).

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 63 TENURE-TRACK POSITIONS: FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AVIONICS AND AEROSPACE SYSTEMS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE HUMAN CENTERED ENGINEERING: BODY AREA SENSOR NETWORKS Concordia University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Health through Prevention Centre, a unique research facility that Engineering invites applications for two tenure-track positions, one provides an integrated and comprehensive environment to promote in Avionics and Aerospace Systems and one in Human Centered healthier lives through changes in behaviour and lifestyle. Engineering: Body Area Sensor Networks. See concordia.ca/perform for more information about PERFORM The appointment in Avionics and Aerospace Systems will be a See concordia.ca/encs for more information about the tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor; exceptional Engineering Faculty. candidates may be considered at the Associate rank. Applicants shall hold a Ph.D. in a relevant Engineering discipline and shall possess The successful candidates shall be committed to teaching, will teaching/research expertise in areas such as, but not limited to: conduct independent research, supervise graduate students and on-board data processing systems; micro-processors; autonomy; fault- attract strong external funding. Membership or eligibility for tolerant systems; real-time embedded systems; integration of avionics membership in a Canadian professional engineering association, systems; sensors and sensor fusion. preferably in Quebec, is essential. The language of instruction at Concordia is English. Knowledge of French is an asset. The appointment in Human Centered Engineering: Body Area Sensor Networks will be at a rank appropriate to the selected Applications must include a cover letter, detailed CV, teaching and candidate. Applicants shall hold a Ph.D. in a relevant Engineering research statements, and names of four referees. Applications are discipline and shall possess teaching/research expertise in areas such due on December 1st, 2017, but will continue to be reviewed until as, but not limited to: body area sensor networks (BASN); wearable the position is filled. The expected start date is July 2018. systems; remote medical sensing; sensor and sensor fusion; body signals: Applications (PDF) should be sent to: acquisition and processing; computing; communication and control for Dr. William E. Lynch, Chair, ECE BASNs. This position will be associated with the PERFORM Better [email protected]

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply for this position; however, Canadians and Permanent Residents will be given priority. Concordia University is strongly committed to employment equity within its community, and to recruiting a diverse faculty and staff. The University encourages applications from all qualified candidates, including women, members of visible minorities, Indigenous persons, members of sexual minorities, persons with disabilities, and others who may contribute to diversification. CONCORDIA.CA

Rochester Institute of Technology Department of Computer Engineering The Department of Computer Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant Professor level starting in the 2018-2019 academic year. Applicants must have a Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering Faculty Positions in Electrical and Computer Engineering or closely related discipline by the time of hire. The department is looking for candidates who can strengthen the core competencies Mississippi State University invites applications for multiple tenure-track and have expertise in the areas of Digital IC Design, Embedded faculty positions in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Systems, Computer Security, Machine Intelligence, High Performance Computing, or other closely related research areas. Outstanding Assistant Professor / Associate Professor / Professor in all areas of candidates in all areas of computer engineering are encouraged to electrical and computer engineering including, but not limited to, apply. Applicants are expected to have a strong publication record, ability to teach computer engineering core courses, potential to Wireless Communication, Mobile and Sensor Networks, Network establish and conduct sponsored research, and the ability to contribute Security, Cyber Security, Cyber Physical Systems, Big Data and Data to the college’s continuing commitment to diversity, pluralism, and Analytics, Power Systems and Power Electronics. individual differences. The department is known for its outstanding curricula, career- An earned doctorate in electrical engineering, computer engineering, oriented education, collaborative research and state-of-the-art or related area and a clear potential for gaining national prominence facilities. Faculty members are actively engaged in research, through funded research and teaching are required. Industrial or federal innovative teaching, partnerships with industry, and participate in laboratory experiences are highly desirable. Level of appointment is cross-disciplinary Ph.D. programs in Engineering, Computing and Information Sciences, Microsystems Engineering, and Imaging commensurate with qualification and experience. Science. RIT is one of the largest private universities in the nation All applicants must apply on line at http://msujobs.msstate.edu with international locations in China, Croatia, Dubai, and Kosovo. Rochester is the third largest city in New York State, its Greater and attach a cover letter, current resume or curriculum vitae, and the Rochester region is rich in cultural and ethnic diversity and was complete contact information for at least three professional references. named one of the top five “Best City for Families” by Kiplinger. MSU is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive Review of applications will begin on December 1, 2017. To apply, submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statement of research consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, ethnicity, interests and plans, statement of teaching philosophy and a list of sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, disability status, at least three references to http://apptrkr.com/1044409. Inquiries age, sexual orientation, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any may be sent to [email protected]. other characteristic protected by law. We always welcome nominations and RIT does not discriminate.RIT is an equal opportunity employer that applications from women, members of any minority group, and others who share promotes and values diversity, pluralism, and inclusion. For more our passion for building a diverse community that reflects the diversity in our information or inquiries, please visit RIT.edu/TitleIX or the U.S. Department of Education student population. at ED.Gov

64 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG TENURE-TRACK AND TENURED POSITIONS ShanghaiTech University invites highly qualified candidates to fill multiple tenure-track/tenured faculty positions as its core founding team in the School of Information Science and Technology (SIST). We seek candidates with exceptional academic records or demonstrated strong potentials in all cutting-edge research areas of information science and technology. They must be fluent in English. English-based overseas academic training or background is highly desired. ShanghaiTech is founded as a world-class research university for training future generations of scientists, entrepreneurs, and technical leaders. Boasting a new modern campus in Zhangjiang Hightech Park of cosmopolitan Shanghai, ShanghaiTech shall trail-blaze a new education system in China. THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, KNOXVILLE Besides establishing and maintaining a world-class research profile, faculty candidates are MULTIPLE TENURE TRACK FACULTY POSITIONS IN also expected to contribute substantially to both graduate and undergraduate educations. COMPUTER SCIENCE, COMPUTER ENGINEERING, Academic Disciplines: Candidates in all areas of information science and technology shall be considered. Our recruitment focus includes, but is not limited to: computer architecture, and ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING software engineering, database, computer security, VLSI, solid state and nano electronics, RF electronics, information and signal processing, networking, security, computational The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer foundations, big data analytics, data mining, visualization, computer vision, bio-inspired computing systems, power electronics, power systems, machine and motor drive, power Science (EECS) at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville management IC as well as inter-disciplinary areas involving information science and technology. (UTK) is seeking candidates for multiple tenure track faculty Compensation and Benefits: Salary and startup funds are highly competitive, commensurate members at the assistant or associate professor level in with experience and academic accomplishment. We also offer a comprehensive benefit package to employees and eligible dependents, including on-campus housing. All regular computer science, computer engineering, and electrical ShanghaiTech faculty members will join its new tenure-track system in accordance with engineering. Applicants should have an earned Ph.D. international practice for progress evaluation and promotion. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Qualifications: Engineering, or a related field. In computer science and • Strong research productivity and demonstrated potentials; • Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Statistics, computer engineering, the department is expanding its Applied Math, or related field); teaching and research in the areas of data analytics, machine • A minimum relevant (including PhD) research experience of 4 years. learning, cybersecurity, internet of things, cloud and virtual Applications: Submit (in English, PDF version) a cover letter, a 2-page research plan, a CV plus copies of 3 most significant publications, and names of three referees to: sist@shanghaitech. environments, high performance computing, and mobile edu.cn. For more information, visit http://sist.shanghaitech.edu.cn/NewsDetail.asp?id=373 computing systems. In electrical engineering, the department Deadline: The positions will be open until they are filled by appropriate candidates. is focused on adding faculty in the areas of power electronics, communications, controls, and signal and image processing. We welcome applicants in these and other areas of computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering. Successful candidates will be expected to teach at both undergraduate and graduate levels, to establish a vigorous funded research program, and to have a willingness to collaborate with other faculty in research. MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Cambridge, MA EECS is housed in a new $40 million teaching and research FACULTY POSITIONS facility completed in 2012. The department currently has The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) seeks candidates for faculty positions an enrollment of more than 800 undergraduate and 300 starting in September 1, 2018, or on a mutually agreed date thereafter. Appointment graduate students, with a faculty of 45, and research will be at the assistant or untenured associate professor level. In special cases, a senior faculty appointment may be possible. Faculty duties include teaching at the expenditures that exceed $18 million per year. UTK is a undergraduate and graduate levels, research, and supervision of student research. Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science or a leading research institution with strong research partnerships related field by the start of employment. We will consider candidates with research with organizations such as the nearby Oak Ridge National and teaching interests in any area of electrical engineering and computer science. Laboratory (ORNL) where several UT faculty have joint Candidates must register with the EECS search website at https://school-of- engineering-faculty-search.mit.edu/eecs/, and must submit application positions or research ties. materials electronically to this website. Candidate applications should include a description of professional interests and goals in both teaching and research. The Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee is seeking Each application should include a curriculum vitae and the names and addresses candidates who have the ability to contribute in meaningful of three or more individuals who will provide letters of recommendation. Letter writers should submit their letters directly to MIT, preferably on the website or ways to the diversity and intercultural goals of the University. by mailing to the address below. Complete applications should be received by December 1, 2017. Applications will be considered complete only when both the The University of Tennessee welcomes and honors people of all applicant materials and at least three letters of recommendation are received. races, genders, creeds, cultures, and sexual orientations, and It is the responsibility of the candidate to arrange reference letters to be uploaded at https://school-of-engineering-faculty-search.mit.edu/eecs/ by December 1, 2017. values intellectual curiosity, pursuit of knowledge, and academic Send all materials not submitted on the website to: freedom and integrity. Interested candidates should apply through Professor Asu Ozdaglar the departmental web site at http://www.eecs.utk.edu/ Interim Department Head, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science people/employment/ and submit a cover letter, a curriculum Massachusetts Institute of Technology Room 38-435 vitae, a statement of research and teaching interests, and contact 77 Massachusetts Avenue information for three references. Review of applications will begin Cambridge, MA 02139 on December 15, 2017, and continue until the positions are filled. M.I.T. is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 65 Three Tenure-track Faculty Positions in Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New University of Central Florida (UCF) Mexico invites applications for three tenure-track faculty positions at the Assistant Professor level. Areas of interest include: Computer Engineering (embedded/real- Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) time systems, hardware security, IoT, data science, data analytics, cloud computing, FPGAs, VLSI); Power Systems (transmission, distribution, cyber-physical The department has openings for exceptional tenured or tenure-track systems, smart-grid, power electronics, autonomous and learning systems); faculty members, five in ECE plus another in our energy systems cluster. and Electromagnetics (antennas, RF circuits and systems, terahertz technology). The department has state-of-the-art facilities and its proximity facilitates All areas of ECE are considered. Of special interests are mid-career collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, or entry-level candidates in controls, cyber-physical systems, brain and the Air Force Research Laboratory. The research expenditures of ECE and monitoring and biomedical sensing, high-frequency circuits, machines associated research centers are over $20 million/year. and drives, power devices, robotics, energy harvesting and storage, Requirements include a doctorate by the time of appointment in electrical energy efficient computing, embedded systems, GPU design and engineering, computer engineering, or closely related fields. Applicants must multicore systems, embedded software, mobile computing devices, IoT, demonstrate a solid publication record, potential for excellent teaching at the Software-Defined Networking and Systems, and big data. Two of the undergraduate and graduate levels, potential to develop an externally funded five positions are dedicated to secure cyber-physical systems and IoT research program, and a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and student hardware security. success, as well as working with broadly diverse communities. Candidates should apply electronically at https://hr.unm.edu/unmjobs, requisition The cluster of Resilient, Intelligent and Sustainable Energy Systems (RISES) has number req2392. one open faculty position at the entry-level level. The areas of interest include infrastructure systems, smart city and connected community. More details Please submit an application letter, statements of research and teaching interests, a commitment to diversity statement, CV, and the contact information of three references. can be found at our cluster website http://www.ucf.edu/research/RISES. For full consideration, applications should be submitted prior to December 1st, 2017. UCF offers a competitive salary and start-up package as well as generous benefits. New faculty members have graduate student support The University of New Mexico is an equal opportunity employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, and significantly reduced teaching loads during their first two years of veteran status, disability, or any other protected class. We are committed to hiring and tenure-track employment. retaining a diverse workforce. All applicants must have a Ph.D. in an area appropriate to the ECE disciplines by the start of the appointment and a strong commitment to academic activities, including teaching, scholarly publications and sponsored research. Successful candidates will have an exceptional record of scholarly research and, at the senior levels, be highly recognized for their technical contributions and leadership in their areas of expertise. ECE has strong educational and research programs, with over 350 graduate students and 1,000 undergraduates, and a state-of-the- art facility, the Harris Engineering Center. The department has three competitively-awarded research centers: FEEDER funded by Department of Energy, the Electric Vehicle Research Center funded by the US Department of Transportation, and MIST funded by NSF. Additional Explore the amazing world of engineers— research sponsors include DARPA, NASA, ARO, AMD, Analog Devices, Harris, Intel, L-3 Communication, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Siemens, all in one web site… and Texas Instruments as well as local high-tech start-ups. UCF has over 66,000 students and is the nation’s second largest university. Located in Orlando, ECE and UCF are at the center of Florida High Tech Corridor with an excellent industrial base in telecommunications, energy, computer systems, semiconductors, defense, space, lasers, simulation, software and the world-renowned entertainment/theme park TryEngineering.org industry. Exceptional weather, easy access to the seashore, one of the largest convention centers in the nation and an international airport that ■ See the exciting work that engineers do is among the world’s best are just a few features that make the UCF/ ■ gin Orlando area ideal. Learn how they make a diﬀ erence En ee y ri r n UCF is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified ■ T g Play online games and challenges

applicants are encouraged to apply, including minorities, women, veterans and individuals with disabilities. As a Florida public university, ■ Find accredited engineering UCF makes all application materials and selection procedures available programs, summer camps, to the public upon request. lesson plans, and more Please send your inquiry to [email protected] for ECE positions or to [email protected] for RISES positions. To submit an application, go to the following link(s). Visit www.tryengineering.org today! ECE positions: https://www.jobswithucf.com/postings/50748 Brought to you by IEEE, IBM and TryScience RISES Cluster position: https://www.jobswithucf.com/postings/50414

66 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG 10-EA-0303c-Tryengineering-3.25x4.75-Final.indd 1 9/10/10 2:58 PM Multiple Faculty Positions in Electrical Purdue School of Engineering and Technology, IUPUI and Computer Engineering Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at San and Diego State University has full-time tenure-track faculty positions at the level of Assistant Professor with an anticipated start date Thomas J. Linnemeier Guidant Foundation Chair of August 2018. The applicant must hold a Ph.D. in Electrical The Department of Biomedical Engineering in the Purdue School of Engineering, Computer Engineering, or closely related discipline. Engineering and Technology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is seeking highly qualified individuals to apply for Computer Engineering: The applicant shall have a breadth of the position of Department Chair and holder of the Thomas J. Linnemeier expertise in Computer Engineering and demonstrated excellent Guidant Foundation Chair in Biomedical Engineering, an endowed, research abilities in one or more of the following areas: tenured position at the rank of Professor. artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data analytics and mining, deep-learning, This senior level leadership position within the School is intended for cognitive computing, software engineering, modeling languages, candidates who are dedicated to the advancement of undergraduate and formal verification. Additional information and application and graduate education, have a distinguished record of research and procedures are available at https://apply.interfolio.com/42856. professional accomplishment, have strong leadership and management abilities, and a steadfast commitment to faculty governance. This is an Inquires can be sent to Professor Amir Alimohammad, Search outstanding opportunity to impact the future direction of the department Committee Chair, at [email protected]. and its programs with the potential to guide the department’s ascension Power and Green Energy: The applicant shall have expertise in to among the premier departments of its kind in the nation. power systems planning, analysis, and control with a focus on Applicants must have a Ph.D. in engineering or a related discipline one or more of the following areas: smart-grid and microgrid and a well-documented research career evidenced by significant modeling, integration, and security; renewable, sustainable and publications and extramural research funding. The search encourages distributed energy systems and grid-integration; and advanced applications from not only well-established Professors but also from power electronics for grid applications. Additional information rapidly progressing Associate Professors whose work would merit and application procedures are available at https://apply. promotion to Professor. The incumbent’s research would have a primary interfolio.com/42838. Inquires can be sent to Professor Sridhar application in an established area of biomedical engineering such as Seshagiri, Search Committee Chair, at sridhar.seshagiri@mail. biomaterials, biomechanics, or bioinstrumentation. Other areas in BME sdsu.edu. will be considered. Besides leading and managing the department, the successful candidate will be expected to establish a state-of-the-art Digital Signal Processing: The applicant shall have expertise in research program in collaboration with the Indiana University School digital signal processing. Special considerations will be given of Medicine, also on the IUPUI campus. Major institutes and centers at to candidates who have a track record of interdisciplinary IUPUI include the Biomechanics and Biomaterials Research Center, the research in Cyber-Physical Systems. Additional information and Indiana Center for Musculoskeletal Health, the Simon Cancer Center, the application procedures are available at https://apply.interfolio. Krannert Institute of Cardiology, and the Stark Neurosciences Institute. A com/42858. Inquires can be sent to Professor Ashkan Ashrafi, qualified candidate may be offered joint appointments in both engineering Search Committee Chair, at [email protected]. and medicine. A more complete description of BME at IUPUI is available at www.engr.iupui.edu/bme/ The successful candidate will be expected to establish and maintain an active externally-funded research program, achieve The Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI has 7 academic excellence in teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, departments with an extensive undergraduate and graduate degree advise students, and participate in departmental governance. portfolio, including numerous CAC, EAC, and ETAC of ABET accredited B.S programs. The School has over 3,500 students, including approximately The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is 500 graduate students pursuing either M.S. or Ph.D. programs. strongly committed to excellence in both research and teaching More information about the School is available at engr.iupui.edu/ at the graduate and undergraduate levels. The department offers an ABET-accredited B.S. degree program in Electrical The IUPUI campus has approximately 30,000 students and over 200 Engineering and Computer Engineering, M.S. program in degree programs with annual research expenditures totaling over $300M. IUPUI has received the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Electrical Engineering, and joint Ph.D. program in Electrical (HEED) Award for five consecutive years. More information about IUPUI Engineering. Additional information about the department and is available at www.iupui.edu university can be found at http://electrical.sdsu.edu/ and http:// www.sdsu.edu. Applications must include a statement of interest, curriculum vitae, and contact information for at least three references. Apply for this position Review of the applications will begin immediately and will at https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/4229. Applications are continue until the position is filled. welcome until the position is filled. IUPUI is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative SDSU is a Title IX, equal opportunity employer.. Action educator and employer and affords reasonable accommodations to persons with disabilities.

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 67 Senior and Junior Tenure-Track Faculty Faculty Opening in Positions in Artificial Intelligence Electrical and Computer The Department of Computer Science at the National University Engineering of Singapore (NUS) invites applications for one Distinguished Professorship and several tenure-track faculty positions in artificial Texas Tech University intelligence, machine learning, computational neuroscience and related areas of robotics. The Department enjoys ample research funding, moderate teaching loads, excellent facilities, and extensive international collaborations. We have a full range of faculty covering all major research Texas Tech University (TTU). The Department of areas in computer science and a thriving PhD program that attracts the brightest students from the region and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is inviting beyond. More information is available at www.comp.nus.edu.sg/careers. applications for faculty positions in Pulsed Power, NUS offers highly competitive salaries and is situated in Singapore, an English-speaking cosmopolitan city or Transient Computational Electromagnetics, or that is a melting pot of many cultures, both the east and the west. Singapore offers a safe and family-friend related. Candidates are expected to obtain external environment with high quality education and healthcare at all levels, as well as very low tax rates. Singapore has funding. A Ph.D. in electrical engineering, physics, also recently launched a S$150 million national initiative, AI.SG, to expand research, development, and adoption or a closely related field is required. A readiness of AI technologies. AI.SG will be hosted at NUS. to engage in professional service activities, as well Candidates for the Distinguished Professor position should have an established record of outstanding research as collaborate within the department and across achievements, thought leadership, and international stature in artificial intelligence. disciplines is expected. Candidates for Assistant Professor positions should demonstrate excellent research potential in AI, and a strong commitment to teaching. Truly outstanding Assistant Professor applicants will be considered for the endowed Please apply online at https://www.texastech.edu/ Sung Kah Kay Assistant Professorship. careers/ referencing requisition # 11292BR. Applicants for the position must be eligible for a US secret Application Details: clearance. Applicants should submit a résumé / c.v. and •Submit the following documents (in a single PDF) online via: https://faces.comp.nus.edu.sg a cover letter with three references and email copies to A cover letter that indicates the position applied for and the main research interests the search committee chair [email protected]. Curriculum Vitae As an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action A teaching statement employer, Texas Tech University is dedicated to the goal of A research statement building a culturally diverse faculty committed to teaching • Provide the contact information of 3 referees when submitting your online application, or, arrange for at least 3 and working in a multicultural environment. We actively references to be sent directly to [email protected]. encourage applications from all those who can contribute, •Application reviews will commence immediately and continue until positions are filled. through their research, teaching, and/or service, to the diversity and excellence of the academic community •Please submit your application by 1 December 2017. at Texas Tech University. The university welcomes If you have further enquiries, please contact the Search Committee Chair, Weng-Fai Wong, at [email protected] applications from minorities, women, veterans, persons with disabilities, and dual‐career couples.

UCLA ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT PROFESSOR

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department MULTIPLE FACULTY POSITIONS in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering Applied Science at the University of California, Los The School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania is growing its faculty by Angeles (UCLA) is accepting applications for tenure- 33% over the next five years. As part of this initiative, the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering is track faculty positions. Further information and an engaged in an aggressive, multi-year hiring effort for multiple tenure-track positions at all levels. Candidates online application may be found at: must hold a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related area. The department seeks individuals with exceptional promise for, or proven record of, research achievement, https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/apply/JPF03177 who will take a position of international leadership in defining their field of study, and excel in undergraduate EOE and graduate education. Leadership in cross-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary collaborations is of particular interest. We are interested in candidates in all areas that enhance our research strengths in: • Nanodevices and nanosystems (nanoelectronics, MEMS/NEMS, power electronics, nanophotonics, integrated devices and systems at nanoscale), • Circuits and computer engineering (analog, RF, mm-wave, digital circuits, emerging circuit design, computer engineering, IoT, embedded and cyber-physical systems), and • Information and decision systems (control, optimization, robotics, data science, network science, Tenure-stream Faculty Positions- Embedded Systems and Multisensor-multitarget Tracking communications, information theory, signal processing, markets and social systems). The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Prospective candidates in all areas are strongly encouraged to address large-scale societal problems in at McMaster University invites applications for these energy, transportation, health, food and water, economic and financial networks, critical infrastructure, and two faculty positions. Successful applicants will national security. We are especially interested in candidates whose interests are aligned with the school’s have an earned PhD and the potential for excellence strategic plan, http://www.seas.upenn.edu/PennEngineering2020/ in both research and teaching. For more information and to apply, please visit http:// Diversity candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. Interested persons should submit an online application bit.ly/1RpRvaT and view job ID 13161 or 15585. at http://www.ese.upenn.edu/faculty-positions and include curriculum vitae, statement of research and All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply. teaching interests, and at least three references. Review of applications will begin on December 1, 2017. However, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority. McMaster University is The University of Pennsylvania is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Minorities/Women/Individuals with strongly committed to employment equity within its Disabilities/Veterans are encouraged to apply. community and to recruiting adverse faculty and staff.

68 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG Best New Journal in STM 2015

The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Toronto invites applications for up to four tenure-stream faculty appointments at the rank of Associate Become a Professor. The appointments will commence on July 1, 2018, Within the general field of electrical and computer engineering, we seek applications from candidates with expertise in one or more of the follow- published author ing strategic research areas: 1. Computer or Communications Engineer- ing, with preference for a focus on machine learning, computer security and privacy, or data science; 2. Electrical Power Systems, with prefer- in 4 to 6 weeks. ence for a focus on power systems protection; 3. Systems Control, with preference for a focus on robotics. Published online only, IEEE Access is ideal Applicants are expected to have a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer En- for authors who want to quickly announce gineering, or a related field, and have at least five years of academic or recent developments, methods, or new relevant industrial experience. products to a global audience. Successful candidates will be expected to initiate and lead an independent, competitive and innovative research program of international calibre, and to teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Candi- IEEE Access is a multidisciplinary dates should have demonstrated excellence in research and teaching. journal that allows you to: Excellence in research is evidenced primarily by publications in leading journals or conferences in the field, presentations at significant confer- • Reach millions of global users through the ences and a high profile in the field with strong endorsements by referees IEEE Xplore® digital library with free access to all of high international standing. Evidence of excellence in teaching will be demonstrated by strong communication skills, a compelling statement of • Submit multidisciplinary articles that do not fit teaching submitted as part of the application highlighting areas of inter- neatly in traditional journals est and accomplishments, as well as strong letters of recommendation. • Expect a rapid yet rigorous peer review— Eligibility and willingness to register as a Professional Engineer in On- a key factor why IEEE Access is included in tario is highly desirable. Web of Science (and has an Impact Factor) The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engi- • Establish yourself as an industry pioneer by neering at the University of Toronto ranks among the best in North Amer- ica. It attracts outstanding students, has excellent facilities, and is ideally contributing to trending, interdisciplinary topics located in the middle of a vibrant, artistic, diverse and cosmopolitan city. in one of the Special Sections Additional information may be found at http://www.ece.utoronto.ca. • Integrate multimedia and track usage and Review of applications will begin after October 3, 2017, however, the citation data for each published article position will remain open until December 11, 2017. You must submit your application online, by following the submission guidelines given at • Connect with readers through commenting http://uoft.me/how-to-apply. Applications submitted in any other way • Publish without a page limit for will not be considered. only $1,750 per article As part of your online application, please include a curriculum vitae, a summary of your previous research and future research plans, as well as a statement of teaching experience and interests. Applicants must arrange for three letters of reference to be sent directly by the referees (on letterhead, signed and scanned), by email to the ECE department at IEEE Access... [email protected]. a multidisciplinary The University of Toronto is strongly committed to diversity within its open access community and especially welcomes applications from racialized per- journal that’s sons / persons of colour, women, Indigenous / Aboriginal People of worthy of North America, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ persons, and others the IEEE. who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas. As part of your application, you will be asked to complete a brief Diver- sity Survey. This survey is voluntary. Any information directly related to you is confidential and cannot be accessed by search committees or human resources staff. Results will be aggregated for institutional planning purposes. For more information, please see http://uoft.me/UP.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadi- Learn more at: ans and permanent residents will be given priority. ieeeaccess.ieee.org 17-PUB-013 3/17

SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 69 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate School of Engineering and Management Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) Dayton, Ohio Department Head and Faculty Position

The Air Force Institute of Technology is seeking applications for both the position of Head, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (non- tenure-track), as well as a faculty position in Computer Science or Computer What + If = IEEE Engineering (tenure-track). Applicants for the Department Head position must have an earned doctorate in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or computer science with credentials commensurate with the appointment as a full professor. A strong record of academic leadership experience is highly desirable. This is a non- tenure-track, 3 year renewable term position.

Applicants for the tenure-track faculty position must have an earned doctorate in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, or closely related field. All areas and ranks will be considered. We are particularly interested in a cyber-security focus involving embedded and/or cyber physical 420,000+ members in 160 systems security. The position requires teaching at the graduate level as well as establishing and sustaining a strong research program.

countries. Embrace the largest, The Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) is the premier Department of Defense (DoD) institution for graduate education in science, technology, global, technical community. engineering, and management. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering offers accredited MS and PhD programs in Electrical Engineering, People Driving Technological Innovation. Computer Engineering, and Computer Science as well as an MS program in Cyber Operations. ieee.org/membership Applicants for either position must be U.S. citizens. Full details on these positions, the department, applicant qualifications, and application procedures can be found at https://www.afit.edu/ENG/. Review of applications will begin on December 1, #IEEEmember 2017. The United States Air Force is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer.

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70 | OCT 2017 | NORTH AMERICAN | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering invites Tenure-Track Faculty Position applications from outstanding candidates for a The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Kansas State University invites applications for tenure- position at the assistant professor level in biomedical track faculty positions at all levels (Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor) beginning August 2018. Applicants engineering. Preference will be given to candidates should have a Ph.D. or equivalent degree in electrical and computer engineering or related discipline, a strong with expertise in spatial biology, bioinstrumentation, publication record, a commitment to research and teaching excellence, and the potential to develop a vigorous biosensors or bioimaging. extramurally-funded research program and participate in collaborative and interdisciplinary research. Outstanding candidates will be considered for open endowed positions. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, The position requires a Ph.D. in Electrical computer vision, cybersecurity, cyber physical systems, and network science & engineering. Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, or a related The College of Engineering at Kansas State University is adding 35 additional faculty over a five-year period. field and the ability to develop a robust externally It is the most comprehensive engineering college in Kansas, with over 4200 undergraduate and graduate funded research program, teach graduate and students. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has 25 faculty members and approximately undergraduate courses, supervise graduate 470 undergraduate and graduate students. The department is located in the new Engineering Hall equipped with students, and engage in outreach activities. the state-of-the-art research laboratories, classrooms, and office spaces. The department has strong research programs in power engineering, electronics, wireless communications, network engineering, and biomedical Thanks to substantial growth in both student engineering. enrollment and tenure-track faculty positions, the Kansas State University, with its enrollment of approximately 25,000 students, is designated a Carnegie Doctoral/ College of Engineering has received funding to Research-Extensive Institution and has declared its goal to be a top-50 public research university by 2025. The build a new engineering building, scheduled to be College of Engineering is located on the main KSU campus in Manhattan, KS. Manhattan is a family-friendly completed in 2020. The new engineering building and safe community of 55,000 nestled in the scenic Flint Hills of Northeast Kansas. Manhattan offers affordable provides modern facilities capable of supporting housing, outstanding schools, excellent parks and recreational facilities, an engaging cultural environment, and short commute times. high-tech research and laboratory space. This building will allow the College to pursue its strategic Applicants should submit the following items, online through: http://careers.k-state.edu/cw/en-us/job/502199/ vision, serve Nevada and the nation, and educate assistant-associate-professor-electrical-and-computer-engineering (1) a cover letter with indication of your research area, (2) a curriculum vitae, (3) a statement of research vision, (4) a statement of teaching interests and future generations of engineering professionals. philosophy, and (5) contact information for at least three professional references. For further questions about the For further information and to apply for a position please position please email [email protected] visit (https://www.unrsearch.com/postings/25215). Screening of applications will begin October 15, 2017, and will continue until the positions are filled. Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States at the time of employment. A background check is a EEO/AA Women and Under-represented groups, individuals prerequisite to an employment offer. Kansas State University is an equal-opportunity employer, and it actively with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply. seeks diversity among its employees.

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SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | NORTH AMERICAN | OCT 2017 | 71 PAST FORWARD_BY DAVID C. BROCK

The metaphor of thought as a thread becomes literal in rope memory. On the Apollo missions to MEMORY the moon, rope memory (a 1963 prototype is shown here) was used to store software for the Apollo Guidance Computer. The software was rendered in metal wire threaded through tiny magnetic cores. FOR A core containing a thread through the center represented a 1; an empty core represented a 0. Workers

THE MOON painstakingly encoded each bit of information by hand, and it was their duty to never lose the thread. ■ MUSEUM HISTORY RICHARDS/COMPUTER MARK

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*Please check the website for plan availability in your region, as coverage may vary or Program Administered by Mercer Health & Benefits Administration LLC may only be available in some areas of the United States (except territories), Puerto Rico and Canada (except Quebec). This program is administered by Mercer Consumer, a service In CA d/b/a Mercer Health & Benefits of Mercer Health & Benefits Administration LLC. For life and health insurance plans, Mercer Insurance Services LLC (Canada) Limited, represented by its employees Nicole Swift and Suzanne Dominico, acts as broker with respect to residents of Canada. For the Professional Liability Insurance Plan, Marsh AR Insurance License #100102691 Canada Limited acts as the insurance broker with respect to residents of Canada. CA Insurance License #0G39709 **For information on features, costs, eligibility, renewability, limitations and exclusions. 78759 (10/17 ) Copyright 2017 Mercer LLC. All rights reserved.

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